Lucy Morris Chaffee Alden


Lucy Morris Chaffee Alden was a 19th-century American author, educator, and hymn writer. Over 200 of her works appeared in various periodicals.

Early years and education

Lucy Morris Chaffee was born in South Wilbraham, New Hampden, Massachusetts, November 20, 1836. Her parents were Daniel Davis and Sarah Flynt Chaffee. Among her maternal ancestors was Judge John Bliss, of South Wilbraham, who on April 8, 1775, was appointed sole committee "to repair to Connecticut to request that Colony to co-operate with Massachusetts for the general defense", and who, under the constitution was chosen to the first and several succeeding senates. Alden spent a year at Monson Academy. There was a sister, Catherine Newell Chaffee.

Career

For 10 years, Alden taught school, and for three years, she served as a member of the school board of her native town. She was left alone by the death of her mother in 1884. In July, 1890, she married Lucius David Alden, an early schoolmate who had relocated to the Pacific coast, but she continued to live at her father's homestead. Her poetic, and far more numerous prose, writings appeared in various newspapers of Springfield, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis, in several Sunday school songbooks, and in quarterly and monthly journals. One doctrinal pamphlet of hers was translated by a British officer and missionary in Madras into Hindi, and many copies printed. Copies of another were voluntarily distributed by a county judge in Florida among members of his state legislature. In 1891, under an appropriation, made by an association whose conferences reached from Maine to California, of a sum to be distributed among writers of meritorious articles, Alden was selected to write for Massachusetts.
She died in 1912 and is buried at Old Hampden Cemetery in Hampden, Massachusetts.

Poetical quotation

We court the friendships thou has wrought,

The charms thy loves can lend,

Till many a form thy fruitful thought

Seems like our household friend.

Selected works