#52Ancestors challenge, week 8: Haverhill poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

​Below: John Greenleaf Whittier. Source: Wikipedia

I'm supposed to do 52 profiles of ancestors in 2018 and I'm falling behind! So here is #8: John Greenleaf Whittier.

He's a nearly forgotten poet who in his day was a household name.  This was back before radio or TV, when people read (to themselves and to each other) for entertainment.  

John Greenleaf Whittier is not my ancestor.  He can't be.  He never had children.  We are however, related...his great grandfather Joseph Whittier (1669-1717) of Haverhill is my eighth great grandfather. This makes us second cousins seven times removed.  Say that ten times fast!

​Because he has been an important source for me in learning old stories of the area, I decided to include him in the 52 ancestors list.

Below: John Greenleaf Whittier birthplace, Haverhill, Mass. (Source: Hampton N.H. Historical Society)

Above: John Greenleaf Whittier Home and Museum, Amesbury, Mass., where he lived for over fifty years.  Source: museum website
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So who was this guy,  famous enough to have two historical museums in the area, one in Haverhill (where he was born) and one in Amesbury (where he lived when he was famous)?

Basically, he was a self-educated farmer who lived in an ancient farmhouse in Haverhill - it was already well over a century old when he was born there in 1808 - that had been built by one of the founders of Haverhill.  He wrote a lot of poetry, and was involved in the movement that wanted to abolish slavery in the United States.  This activity got him into the circle of famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who was editor of a newspaper in Newburyport for a time.  This newspaper started publishing Whittier's poems, and later when Garrison got more famous and began running in literary circles, he was able to promote Whittier.  He became famous as a result of his poem Snowbound, about being snowed in.  It starts like this:

"The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon."

Based on his literary fame for this and other poems, he eventually received an honorary degree from Harvard.

Whittier himself barely left the area around Haverhill, other than a couple years in Philadelphia and New York when he was a young man.  He complied lots of the historical stories of the Merrimack Valley area into poems.  I have written blog posts about some of these topics, such as the story of Captain Waldron's deceit of the Indians and their revenge upon him; and the story of the Pennacook Indian princess Wenunchus, who drowned in the Merrimack as a result of a squabble between her father Passaconnaway and her husband Winnepurkett of Saugus. 

Back in Whittier's day, poems were sometimes epics, running thousands of lines.  People would read them outloud to each other in the evening by lamplight or by the fire.  I recorded myself reading The Bridal of Pennacook (in part), to get a feel for the language.  That poem also provided a good geography lesson about upper reaches of the Merrimack River, which was the heartland of the Pennacook indians.  The poem mentions Turee's brook, Contocook, "the Crystal Hills to the far southeast", Sunapee, Snooganock, Coos, Umbagog Lake, Ammonoosuc, Chepewass, "the Keenomps of the hills which throw/Their shade on the Smile of Manito"; Kearsarge, Babboosuck brook, Otternic, Sondagardee, Squamscot, Piscataquog...does anyone know these places??