Samuel Woodworth
Samuel Woodworth was an American poet and dramatist best known for his poem "The Old Oaken Bucket," inspired by his childhood home in Scituate, Massachusetts. Born in 1784, Woodworth faced considerable hardship in his early life, influencing his literary themes that often celebrated agrarian ideals. After receiving an education from Reverend Nehemiah Thomas, he moved to Boston, where he began his career in journalism, eventually settling in New York City. Woodworth's contributions included a variety of poetry, lyrics for popular songs, and significant involvement in American theater, notably with his successful play "The Forest Rose," which became a staple of American musical theater for decades.
Despite his literary successes, Woodworth struggled financially throughout his life, working various jobs and experiencing periods of debt. His dedication to American literature and journalism is acknowledged by historians, but he faced challenges in achieving financial stability. Woodworth's later years were marked by health issues, leading to his death in 1842. Today, he is remembered for his contributions to American culture and his role in shaping the nation’s literary landscape.
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Samuel Woodworth
Playwright
- Born: January 13, 1784
- Birthplace: Scituate, Massachusetts
- Died: December 9, 1842
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
The most famous work of American poet and dramatist Samuel Woodworth is the poem “The Old Oaken Bucket,” named for Woodworth’s family homestead in Scituate, Massachusetts. The verse was set to music in 1826 and was a popular song for schoolchildren to learn. The Haydn Quartet recorded the song on the Berliner Gramophone label in 1899. Early in the century, the oaken bucket of the poem’s name came to symbolize affection for home in a more generic sense; for example, a ceremonial oaken bucket is the football trophy awarded to the winner of the game between Indiana’s two most energetic rivals, Indiana University and Purdue University.
Samuel Woodworth was born in 1784 in Scituate, Massachusetts, in the house memorialized in his poem. The house, which was built in 1675 by John Northey, still stands and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Woodworth’s father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War and was a farmer at the time of Samuel’s birth. Even though Woodworth’s father was financially unsuccessful and Samuel’s childhood and adolescence were plagued by hardship, praise for the agrarian life would be a common theme in Woodworth’s writing.
Woodworth received an education while living as a young teen with the Reverend Nehemiah Thomas, who taught him English, Latin grammar, and classical literature. After leaving Thomas’s house, Woodworth moved to Boston and apprenticed as a journalist under Benjamin Russell. Over the next few years, Woodworth lived and worked at various papers, including some of his own inception, in Boston, New Haven, and Baltimore, before relocating permanently to New York City in 1809.
In 1810, he married Lydia Reeder, with whom he would eventually have ten children, and he established a printing business the following year in an effort to provide his family with steady income. He wrote three critically lauded satirical poems in 1811-1812, and during the War of 1812 published a news periodical called The New York War. However, by 1815, shortly before he published a novel set during the War of 1812, he found himself deeply in debt and was forced to sell his printing business. He went to work for Charles N. Baldwin, but Baldwin’s printing business failed in 1818, around the same time that Woodworth published The Poems, Odes, Songs, and Other Metrical Effusions, of Samuel Woodworth. Finding himself unemployed, Woodworth took several positions as an editor of newspapers and periodicals, and produced two serial novels, Magnanimity and Resignation. Although published in a periodical intended for women, the serials are nonetheless highly political, reflecting the strong republican and democratic convictions of the author. Woodworth also produced a large body of poetry and a number of popular lyrics for songs, including one called “Kentucky Hunters,” which appears in James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Prairie (1827).
Woodworth continued to work haphazardly in printing for a number of years and is recognized by historians of American journalism for his diligence and dedication to building the American magazine publishing industry and fostering the development of a uniquely American literature. He is also remembered for his contribution to American theater, although like his journalistic efforts, the work brought him little financial success and no financial security.
Woodworth began writing and producing plays in 1822, most of which were unsuccessful. His third play, The Forest Rose: Or, American Farmers (pr. 1825), another paean to the populist agrarian life, was a monumental hit that was performed almost continually around the United States for the next thirty-five years, even enjoying a popular staging in London’s West End. The play is considered the first hit show of the American musical theater.
Woodworth was praised throughout his life as a representative of the American popular sentiment. His last collection, 1830’s Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads, Pastoral, Amatory, Sentimental, Patriotic, Religious, and Miscellaneous, Together with Metrical Epistles, Tales, and Recitations, was critically respected for this popular voice, but neither it nor any of his followup plays to The Forest Rose brought him enough financial success to continue as a full-time writer and publisher. In 1835, he worked for a year as a clerk in Boston’s Navy Yard, but his eyesight failed him, and he subsequently suffered two paralyzing strokes. He was an invalid until his death in New York City in 1842.