Woodworth's reputation rests upon this one stroke of genius. He died in 1842 at the age of fifty-seven. But after almost fifty years his memory is still green, and we still delight to pay tender homage to the spot which inspired one of the most beautiful songs America has yet produced.
In the life of the Quaker poet there is an unwritten chapter of personal history full to the brim of romance. It will be remembered that Whittier in his will left ten thousand dollars for an Amesbury Home for Aged Women. One room in this home Mrs. Elizabeth W. Pickard (the niece to whom the poet bequeathed his Amesbury homestead, and who passed away in the early spring of this year [1902], in an illness contracted while decorating her beloved uncle's grave on the anniversary of his birth), caused to be furnished with a massive black walnut set formerly used in the "spare-room" of her uncle's house--the room where Lucy Larcom, Gail Hamilton, the Cary sisters, and George Macdonald were in former times entertained. A stipulation of this gift was that the particular room in the Home thus to be furnished was to be known as the Whittier room.
In connection with this Home and this room comes the story of romantic interest. Two years after the death of Mr. Whittier an old lady made application for admission to the Home on the ground that in her youth she was a schoolmate and friend of the poet. And although she was not entitled to admission by being a resident of the town, she would no doubt have been received if she had not died soon after making the application.
This aged woman was Mrs. Evelina Bray Downey, concerning whose schoolgirl friendship for Whittier many inaccurate newspaper articles were current at the time of her death, in the spring of 1895. The story as here told is, however, authentic.
Evelina Bray was born at Marblehead, October 10, 1810. She was the youngest of ten children of a ship master, who made many voyages to the East Indies and to European ports. In a letter written in 1884, Mrs Downey said of herself: "My father, an East India sea captain, made frequent and long voyages. For safekeeping and improvement he sent me to Haverhill, bearing a letter of introduction from Captain William Story to the family of Judge Bartley. They passed me over to Mr. Jonathan K. Smith, and Mrs. Smith gave me as a roommate her only daughter, Mary. This was the opening season of the New Haverhill Academy, a sort of rival to the Bradford Academy. Subsequently I graduated from the Ipswich Female Seminary, in the old Mary Lyon days."