If you visit the town of Sterling , Massachusetts today , you ’ll find asmall atomic number 29 statueof a woolly little creature intend to be a replica of the originallambthat take after 9 - year - old Mary Sawyer to schoolhouse in 1815 . Below the statue is a memorial tablet inscribed with the renowned opening verse :
So who just was Mary Sawyer and who was this John Roulstone who allegedly wrote the original poem ? According to a60 - page bookpublished in 1928 by none other than Henry Ford ( more on that later ) , Mary Sawyer was a typical New England schoolgirl who nursed a famish lamb back to wellness , winning a womb-to-tomb admirer .
" I got the lamb warm by wrapping it in an old garment and take hold it in my arms beside the hearth , " an adult Sawyer recount in the book . " In the morning , much to my girlish delectation , it could stand ; and from that time it improved apace . It presently learned to drink milk ; and from the time it would walk about , it would follow me anywhere if only I called it . "
Before leaving for school one morning , Sawyer whistle for the lamb and it came faithfully trotting over , at which spot her brother Nat suggested , " Let ’s take the Charles Lamb to school with us . " She endeavor to hide the Charles Lamb in a basket under her chair , but it was discover when she stood up to enumerate a deterrent example and the fluffy critter started to bleat . Her teacher , Polly Kimball , " laugh outright , " which caused Sawyer some embarrassment , so she take away the Charles Lamb out to a shed until schoolhouse was out .
John Roulstone was a local male child fix for college who happened to be call in the onetime crimson schoolhouse that mean solar day and was " very much proud of with the incident of the lamb , " Sawyer recall inHenry Ford ’s Scripture . Roulstone went home , wrote a three - stanza verse form and return the next mean solar day on hogback to hand deliver the original verses of " Mary Had a Little Lamb " to Sawyer herself .
Or so goes the story in Sterling , Massachusetts .
Did Sarah Hale Write ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?
Meanwhile , in Newport , New Hampshire , the townspeople keep hometown hero Sarah Josepha Hale , as the author of this darling nursery rhyme . ( Hale is also noted for her function increating the Thanksgivingcelebration ) . As a young poet and writer , Hale move to Boston in 1828 to become the editor of the first women ’s magazine in the United States , afterward know as " Godey ’s Lady ’s Book . " It was in Boston that Hale met Lowell Mason , a young player and composer intent on bringing music breeding into America ’s public schools .
Mason and Hale shared the belief that simple child ’s poem determine to medicine could be used to teach good , Christian moral to kids that would help them grow them into rich and erect citizens . At Mason ’s petition , Hale write a unforesightful playscript of 15 poems called " verse form For Our Children , " which was published in 1830 . Mason then spell simple melodies to accompany each verse form , including the six - poesy poem then known as " Mary ’s Lamb . "
Interestingly , the strain Mason save for Mary ’s Lamb , which was include in his 1831 book " Juvenilelyre , " likely the first public shoal songbook , sound nothing like the melodyevery schoolkid now knows by heart . That melody was borrowed later from a popular minstrel tune called " Goodnight Ladies , " specifically the chorus line that goes , " Merrily we swan along , roll along , seethe along . Merrily we cast along , over the dark blue-blooded sea ! "
Anyway , back to the controversy . Sawyer claimed that the first three verses of Hale ’s verse form were superposable to the one written by vernal John Roulstone , although the firearm of paper gifted to Sawyer had long since disappeared . And Roulstone tragically died while a newcomer at Harvard , so he was n’t around to corroborate . When Hale ’s version was included in school readers nationwide in the 1850s , Sawyer assume that the author had just expanded on Roulstone ’s original three poetry .
Enter Henry Ford
After both of the women were long hold up , automobile magnate Henry Ford stepped into the affray . In 1927 , he took up the cause of Mary Sawyer , moving the wooden frame of Mary ’s original red school from Sterling . Massachusetts , to the nearby Ithiel Town of Sudbury , where Ford have an inn . Then in 1928 , he publish the aforementioned book title " The Story of Mary and Her Little Lamb , " which gives Roulstone full credit for the original verses and asked why a respected local woman who serve as a matron of the local infirmary would make up such a wild story and repeat it her total life .
Hale ’s defenders ask the same question . " The story of Mary Sawyer implies that somehow Sarah Hale came across this never published schoolhouse poem and plagiarized it . How could she have come across it?“writes Sandra Sonnichsen , volunteer archivist of the Sarah J. Hale Collection at the Richards Free Library in Newport , New Hampshire . " Henry Ford ’s book explains that the two towns [ where Sawyer and Hale lived ] were close to each other . They are ninety miles apart over the most direct path that would have been followed in 1815 . Henry had not yet devise the automobile , so the length was considerable . "
