September 01, 2024 Sarah Barrett Bolton (1831-1893)

Bolton: First Poet Laureate of Indiana

For Women’s History month earlier this year, we celebrated Sarah T. Bolton, who was raised and educated in Madison, Indiana, in the 1820s and named the state’s first poet laureate by then-Gov. Oliver Perry Morton.

Madison has always attracted and produced some amazing artists, even in the early 1800s.

Born to Jonathan B. and Ester (Pendleton) Barrett on Dec. 18, 1814, in Newport, Kentucky, she was 3 years old when her father moved the family to a farmstead in Jennings County near Vernon.

Her first poem was printed in the Madison Banner in 1826 by the editor Col. C.P.J. Arion. She continued writing and her poems were printed in Madison newspapers , as well as newspapers in Cincinnati.

In 1823, when she was 9 years old, the family moved from the isolated farm to the burgeoning city of Madison, Indiana, so she and her five siblings could more easily attend school.

The family lived downtown at 111 West Second Street. Madison is situated in the valley along the Ohio River, but the school she enrolled in was located on “the hilltop” in North Madison. Subsequently, Sarah and the other children had to walk up the steep hill and back daily for their lessons. She learned to read and write, and became a student of poetry at an early age.

Two months before her 18th birthday, in October 1831, she married Nathaniel Bolton, who was co-editor of the Indianapolis Gazette, founded a few years earlier by his stepfather George Smith. They moved to the newly established state capital where, in 1850, she was named the state’s poet laureate by Gov. Oliver Perry Morton.

A year later, Nathaniel was named Indiana’s state librarian. After a brief stint as a clerk in the U.S. Senate, Nathaniel was appointed U.S. Consul to Geneva, Switzerland, by President Franklin Pierce. The family lived there from 1855-57; while in Europe, Sarah continued writing and became a frequent correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial. Later she would be published in Harper’s Weekly and Home Journal Magazine, and became friends with Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Times.

She published three volumes of her poetry, none of which was deemed a commercial success despite the devotion of an admiring public.

Sarah Bolton also was an activist for women’s rights. She collaborated with New Harmony activist Robert Dale Owen, lobbying members of the General Assembly, to help him pass a bill securing property rights for women in Indiana.

At left is one of her most famous poems, “Paddle Your Own Canoe,” later set to music, seems to highlight her progressive attitude.

Widowed by Nathaniel in 1858, Sarah remarried but soon after divorced her second husband, Judge Addison Reese of Canton, Missouri. In 1871, she purchased her home “Beach Bank,” on the outskirts of what is now Beech Grove, Indiana. She continued writing poetry there until her death in 1893. She is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

Sources: Wikipedia; Sarah Barrett Bolton – Madison’s favorite poet,” by Phil Cole, published June 24, 2000, in the Madison Courier, and other items in her file at the Jefferson County Historical Society Archives in Madison, Indiana.