October 18, 1818 – June 3, 1877
- Born in Sodus Point
- Was an American writer, historian and poet.
- She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War.
- Ellet’s most important work, The Women of the American Revolution, was published in 1845. The three volume book profiled the lives of patriotic women in the early history of the United States.
- She was involved with a public scandal involving Edgar Allen Poe and Frances Sargent Osgood and, later, another involving Rufus Wilmot Griswold.
- Her mother was Sarah Maxwell (1780–1849) the daughter of American Revolutionary War captain John Maxwell. During the Revolution, John Maxwell was lieutenant of the first company raised in Sussex County, New Jersey, he was promoted to captain, and attached to the Second Regiment Hunterdon County Militia. He was also a captain in Colonel Spencer’s regiment of the Continental Army, from February 7, 1777, to April 11, 1778. He later joined the Army of George Washington as captain of a company of 100 volunteers known as “Maxwell’s Company”.
- Her father was William Nixon Lummis (1775–1833), a prominent doctor who studied medicine in Philadelphia under the famous physician Dr. Benjamin Rush In the early part of 1800, Dr. Lummis left Philadelphia and purchased the Pulteny estate in Sodus Point.
SODUS BAY
Calm in thy pure and summer beauty yet,
As when of old my childhood’s glances met
This bright expanse, fair bay! I see thee still: —
The laughing ripple’s curl, the wood-crowned hill,
The deep green shore rising in graceful sweep,
The wide smooth waters in their sun-bright sleep,
Scorning the change wrought by each passing year,
In loveliness unfading, still are here.
Lovely thou art—sweet bay!—when first the beam
Of morning glances on the silvery stream
Which seeks thy bosom—when the south winds break
Thy water’s glassy slumber, and awake
A thousand sparkling eddies—when the sky
At noon gleams blue and distant from on high—
When winds are hushed in peace, the flagging sail —
Wooing in vain from heaven the wished-for gale—
Or at bright eve, when the rich sun-set’s pride
Has gemmed with shining gold their glancing tide—
No fairer spot, I ween, the radiant sun
In his broad path of light has looked upon—
And the pale moon in all her midnight round
No place of holier loveliness has found.
Nature is here in wildness. Yonder isles,
Upon whose wooded verge the sunlight smiles|
To meet the glittering wave, know scarce a tread,
Save of the lonely huntsman.
Yet ’tis said, One hero on their shore has found a grave.
He died in fight the death that fits the brave,
And sleeps unheeded there :—the mound which
swells So greenly near, his place of burial tells.
Peaceful thou art—the tempests wild that sweep
The lake, are powerless to disturb thy sleep.
Thou hear’st the voices of thy parent main,
Speaking in thunders ;— but their warning strain
Wakes no stern echo here—in safety still
The fisherman may guide his bark at will,
And smile to hear the billows’ angry roar,
Chafing in rage upon the neighboring shore.
Farewell! I found and leave thee, calm and bright,
And changeless still!—and thus, when starless night
Has closed on eyes which loved to look on thee,
“Wilt thou smile on—then too, as quietly
Yon towering banks will look into thy face
On their unbroken shade.
Thou in the embrace Of this wide shore
as sweetly shalt repose—
As brightly gleam at evening’s fervid close.
Thou hast no part in fleeting years that tell
Of human ills !
My native shore—farewell!
For more information, click this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_F._Ellet
