Rose Terry Cooke (February 17, 1827 – July 18, 1892) was an American author and poet. Some of her earliest contributions were published in Putnam's Magazine; and the Atlantic Monthly, in which she wrote the leading story in the first number; then in the Galaxy, published in Philadelphia; and in Harper's. A very popular story by Cooke was "The Deacon's Week". Her short stories of New England life would fill several volumes. Cooke's dream was that of developing her powers of poetry. Her first verses were printed in the New York Tribune, using her mother's initials for a pseudonym.
Early life and education
Rose Terry was born in a farm house on February 17, 1827, in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her mother was Anne Wright Hurlbut, the daughter of John Hurlbut of Wethersfield, Connecticut, the first New England shipmaster who sailed round the world. He left his daughter an orphan when she was nine years old; and she grew up with a morbid conscience. She married Henry Wadsworth Terry, the son of Nathaniel Terry, president of a Hartford Bank, and for some time a United States representative from Connecticut. Henry Wadsworth Terry was a social favorite, sensitive, generous, and open-hearted. On his mother's side, he belonged to the old Wadsworth stock, from which the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow descended, his immediate ancestor in this country having been the Hon. William Wadsworth; and his uncle, several times removed, having been that Joseph Wadsworth who stole the Charter Oak, and who had a descendant, General Alfred Terry of Fort Fisher and Pulaski notability, the cousin of Rose. There was one younger sister.
Her father educated her in outdoor studies, familiarizing her with birds, bees, and flowers. The mother taught Cooke to read before she was three years old, and at age six, she was studying Walker's Rhyming Dictionary, columns of which had to be learned with their definitions, and compositions written including the words learned. With such an exacting mother, Cooke kept a diary from the age of six to ten, which was preserved at least through adulthood. The dictionary process produced such sentences as: "To-day I imbued my fingers with the blood of cherries!" Cooke was a delicate child, owing to an early illness, which was so severe that for a time, it was thought she would die. It was possibly for that reason that she was encouraged to spend time outdoors. She was an exceedingly sensitive child, too, and her imagination was by no means dwarfed by the servants who told her ghost stories, the most noted of these servants being Athanasius, a Greek boy who escaped from the Turkish massacre.
After her father lost his property in the Morus Multicaulis Speculation, the family moved to Hartford, taking up their residence in a large brick mansion built in 1799 by Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth for his daughter, who had married Nathaniel Terry. When Cooke was about ten, she was sent to the Hartford Female Seminary where she asked to be admitted to a special class considered far beyond her grade level, being instruction in literature and composition given by the principal, John P. Brace. Brace had been an instructor in the school where Cooke's mother received her education. While at the Hartford Female Seminary, "For her own entertainment [Cooke] wrote poems and dramas for her friends". She graduated in 1843, at the age sixteen.
In that same year, she joined the Congregational Church. Both parents raised Cooke in the severest puritanical habits and absolutely restricted her from the company of young men. But that did not prevent the feelings of youth, suppressed in real life, from overflowing into printed verse.
Career
Immediately after graduation, Cooke began to teach in Hartford although she did not remain there for long. She then took a position in a Presbyterian church school in Burlington, New Jersey. In the fourth year there, she became a governess in the family of the clergyman, William Van Rensselaer. After a while, feeling the need there was of her at home, she returned to Hartford and began her literary life.