Mary Sawyer found and cared for a lamb that followed her to school, inspiring the nursery rhyme ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’. Additional stanzas with a moral were added later by Sarah Josepha Hale. Mary’s mother made her lambswool socks, which she later donated to raise money for a restoration project.
On a spring morning in 1816, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and her father found two newborn lambs in their fold in Sterling, Massachusetts. One had been rejected by his mother and nearly died. Mary cared for the animal, nursing it back to health, and became her mate. One day as she made her way to school, the lamb followed her – the real story behind the famous nursery rhyme ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’. The best-known first 12 lines of the nursery rhyme were written by John Roulstone, who heard the story while visiting his uncle in the area, en route to Harvard University.
Mary, a lamb, and the story of the nursery rhyme:
Three additional stanzas were added later by Sarah Josepha Hale and included in her 1830 book Poems for Our Children.
Hale’s contribution is written in a different style to Roulstone’s and gives the poem a moral. The nursery rhyme later appeared as a lesson in the McGuffey Readers.
Mary Sawyer’s mother made lambswool socks for her daughter, who treasured them. Later in her life, Mary donated the stockings to help raise money for the restoration of the Old South Meeting House in Boston.
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