Kate Douglas Wiggin
Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923) was an influential American author and educational reformer, celebrated for her contributions to childhood education and literature. Born in Philadelphia, Wiggin pursued her education at various institutions, ultimately moving to California to focus on kindergarten training. She played a pivotal role in establishing kindergartens in the United States, including the California Kindergarten Training School and the Silver Street Kindergarten in San Francisco, which aimed to support underprivileged children.
Wiggin's literary fame primarily stems from her beloved children's novel, *Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm* (1903), which portrays the life of a resourceful young girl in rural Maine and explores themes of resilience and familial bonds. This book was followed by a successful sequel, *New Chronicles of Rebecca* (1907), and is noted for its realistic depiction of life in Maine. Throughout her career, Wiggin authored various works for both children and adults, often collaborating with her sister on educational and literary projects.
She received multiple accolades during her lifetime, including honorary degrees and recognition as a distinguished figure in education. Wiggin's legacy endures through her literary works and her impact on the kindergarten movement in America, making her a significant figure in both educational and literary history.
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Kate Douglas Wiggin
- Born: September 28, 1856
- Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Died: August 24, 1923
- Place of death: Harrow-on-the-Hill, England
Biography
Kate Douglas Wiggin was born Kate Smith on September 28, 1856, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Robert Noah Smith, a lawyer. Wiggin was educated at Gorham Female Seminary in Hollis, Maine, before attending Morison Academy in Baltimore, Maryland, and Abbot Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. At the age of seventeen, she moved to California to attend Mrs. Severance’s Kindergarten Training School in Los Angeles, graduating in 1877.
As an educational theorist, Wiggin became an advocate for establishing kindergartens in the United States. Before her marriage to lawyer Samuel Bradley Wiggin in 1881, she helped establish the California Kindergarten Training School in San Francisco and opened the Silver Street Kindergarten in a San Francisco slum. He first book, The Story of Patsy: A Reminiscence (1883), was written to raise money for the Silver Street school.
Wiggin collaborated with her sister, Norah Archibald Smith, on books of educational theory as well as books for children filled with rhymes, verses, and stories, most of which were intended to be used in schools. After her husband died in 1889, she returned to Maine, where she eventually met a textile importer, George Christopher Riggs. She married Riggs on March 30, 1895.
A fondness for Maine is reflected in Wiggin’s most well- known title, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, published in 1903. The book was praised for realistically portraying rural life in Maine and for the character of Rebecca, an impoverished fatherless girl who is grudgingly taken in by her two spinster aunts. Despite her circumstances, Rebecca is industrious and imaginative and eventually wins over the stern Aunt Miranda. The book was successful in its day and followed by the sequel, New Chronicles of Rebecca (1907). During the 1990’s, Eric E. Wiggin updated and reissued the stories, describing them as being “rewritten and retold for today’s reader.”
Wiggin wrote other children’s fiction as well as fiction for adults while also collaborating with her sister on several books, including a collection of folktales gathered from English, German, Scandinavian, Irish, Russian, and French literature and anthologies of fairy tales and favorite children’s stories. Mother Carey’s Chickens, a novel for adults published in 1911, was as well received as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. It depicts the experiences of a widow and her children who are forced to give up their home and transform an abandoned house into an attractive and happy home.
During her lifetime, Wiggin received several honors, including a Litt.D. from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1904. She was also named an honoree of the New York Kindergarten Association and one of the San Francisco Examiner’s most distinguished women in the world during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Wiggin died on August 24, 1923, in Harrow-on-the-Hill, England. Despite her contributions as an educator, she will remain best known as the creator of Rebecca and her Sunnybrook Farm tales.