It was in 1815, while residing in Hartford, that her fame was born.  Good old Mrs. Wadsworth, having obtained sight of her journals and manuscripts in prose and verse, the secret accumulation of many years, inflamed her husband’s curiosity so that he, too, asked to see them.  The blushing poetess consented.  Mr. Wadsworth pronounced some of them worthy of publication, and, under his auspices, a volume was printed in Hartford, entitled “Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.”  The public gave it a generous welcome, and its success led to a career of authorship which lasted forty-nine years, and gave to the world fifty-six volumes of poetry, tales, travels, biography, and letters.

So passed her life till she was past twenty-eight.  She had received many offers of marriage from clergymen and others, but none of her suitors tempted her to forsake her pupils, and she supposed herself destined to spend her days as an old maid.  But another destiny was in store for her.  On her way to and from her school, “a pair of deep-set and most expressive black eyes” sometimes encountered hers and spoke “unutterable things.”  Those eyes belonged to a widower, with three children, named Charles Sigourney, a thriving hardware merchant, of French descent, and those “unutterable things” were uttered at length through the unromantic medium of a letter.  The marriage occurred a few months after, in the year 1819.

For the next fifteen years she resided in the most elegant mansion in Hartford, surrounded by delightful grounds, after Mr. Sigourney’s own design; and even now, though the Sigourney place is eclipsed in splendor and costliness by many of more recent date, there is no abode in the beautiful city of Hartford more attractive than this.  Mr. Sigourney was a man of considerable learning, and exceedingly interested in the study of languages.  When he was past fifty he began the study of modern Greek.  Mrs. Sigourney became the mother of several children, all of whom, but two, died in infancy.  One son lived to enter college, but died at the age of nineteen, of consumption.  A daughter grew to womanhood, and became the wife of a clergyman.

After many years of very great prosperity in business, Mr. Sigourney experienced heavy losses, which compelled them to leave their pleasant residence, and gave a new activity to her pen.  He died at the age of seventy-six.  During the last seven years of Mrs. Sigourney’s life, her chief literary employment was contributing to the columns of the New York Ledger.  Mr. Bonner, having while an apprentice in the Hartford Current office “set up” some of her poems, had particular pleasure in being the medium of her last communications with the public, and she must have rejoiced in the vast audience to which he gave her access—­the largest she ever addressed.

Mrs. Sigourney enjoyed excellent health to within a few weeks of her death.  After a short illness, which she bore with much patience, she died in June, 1865, with her daughter at her side, and affectionate friends around her.  Nothing could exceed her tranquility and resignation at the approach of death.  Her long life had been spent in honorable labor for the good of her species, and she died in the fullest certainty that death would but introduce her to a larger and better sphere.