The First Influencer

Imagine a magazine editor whose goal was to teach and inspire you to live the life you want.  Imagine she had recipes, projects and advice on entertaining.  Ideas to help you celebrate the holidays and housekeeping tips.  An editor whose impact defines the way we celebrate holidays and weddings today.

If you thought of Martha Stewart, you’re close, but leading the way for her was Sarah Josepha Hale, one of the most powerful publishers of the 19^th century and whose influence is still felt today. 

A young widow who turned to writing as to support her family, Sarah Josepha Hale is best known for creating the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”  She was writing and editing a Boston women’s journal when Philadelphia publisher Arthur Godey, bought her publication and merged it with own, naming it Godey’s Lady’s Book.  He offered her the position of editor, or “editress” as she preferred.

She made her mark immediately.  She kept Godey’s domestic tips, and reluctantly, the colored fashion plates he’d pioneered and readers loved for scrapbooking and framing, but added poetry, short stories, and serialized novels and reviews.   Each issue also included a sewing pattern and sheet music.  

When Hale started at Godey's, the magazine had a circulation of ten thousand subscribers. Two years later, it jumped to 40,000 and by 1860 had 150,000 subscribers, mailed and shared across the country and becoming the most important women’s publication in the country.  At $3 a year for a subscription, it was also one of the more expensive ones.  

Sarah used her monthly columns’ pulpit to address everything from health to child rearing.  Very traditional, she was an advocate for women’s education, their right to travel and property ownership and even hired women writers and editors, yet she opposed suffrage believing that voting would detract women from their influence in the family.

Enjoy Thanksgiving? Sarah Hale is considered to be the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving,’ as she convinced President Abraham Lincoln to declare this strictly northeast Yankee tradition a federal holiday in 1863.  Hale also established our menu for the day with stories and recipes for roasted turkeys, savory stuffing, and pumpkin pies.

Before 1840 you wore your best dress to take your wedding vows.  That year, Sarah, a huge fan of young Queen Victoria, printed a reproduction of her wearing a white dress as she married her Prince Albert.  It created a sensation that continues today.   

Do you decorate and display a Christmas tree?  Outside of a few Pennsyvania Germans, most mid-19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity and many considered it a ‘pagan’ symbol until Hale published an 1846 etching of the young monarch decorating a small tree with her husband.  To make it more ‘American’ she removed the Queen’s tiara and the consort’s mustache, but the tree and happy children surrounding it went untouched.  Soon every American home had one. 

Hale’s impact, however goes beyond her role as the first ‘influencer.’  As editor of Godey’s she sought out only original material from the most important writers of the day, giving them an outlet for their writing and paying them fairly.  Her authors included Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Henry David Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emma Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  More important, beginning in 1845 she copyrighted each issue,  the first American magazine to do so. It infuriated her mostly male counterparts, many of whom survived by reprinting anything and everything without credit or compensation.   Poe, then known as an editor himself, came to her defense as an argument for author's rights. Eventually the rest of the magazine industry began copyrighting their work. 

Sarah Josepha Hale wasn’t the only female powerhouse in women’s magazines, Louisa Knapp Curtis helped usher in the next generation of female publishers. We still see her influence beyond our celebrations.  Sarah campaigned for the preservation of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia, and fundraised to complete Boston’s Bunker Hill Monument, both sites open to public.

Sarah retired as editor in 1877, passing away two years later at the age of 92.