Woman of the Century/Lavina Stella Goodwin

GOODWIN, Mrs. Lavina Stella, author and educator, born in St. Johnsbury, Vt., 4th February, 1833. Her maiden name was Tyler. In King's Chapel, cemetery. Boston, is the grave of an ancestor marked by a stone from a foreign quarry, dating back to the Colonial period and bearing the coat-of-arms of the English Tyler family From childhood she was an earnest reader and an ambitious student, yet no less a lover of nature and replete with physical activity. While very young her habit of whispering "made-up" stories to herself on her nightly pillow furnished amusement to older listeners. From sensitiveness on the point, her earliest writings were either destroyed or sedulously concealed, until finally some pieces of verse that accidentally fell under a friendly eye were forwarded to a city newspaper and published without her knowledge. When between fourteen and fifteen years old she taught a district school, and for a few years until her marriage was alternately teacher and pupil. Circumstances have developed Mrs. Goodwin's literary talent in the direction of versatility rather than specialty. After having conducted departments for women and children, and become favorably known as a writer of stories, at the beginning of 1869 she was made associate editor of the " Watchman," in especial charge of its family page, and the connection exists still, after an interval of service on the "Journal of Education." A season in California and Mexico tested her ability as a correspondent, and she was employed in that capacity in the Philadelphia Centennial and in the Paris Exposition of 1878, her published letters winning general admiration. She has produced a number of serials, one for a leading London journal. Two juvenile volumes from her pen have appeared, "Little Folks' Own" and "The Little Helper." The former, a collection of stories and verses, had a large sale. Besides contributing much to various popular publications for young people, she has gained recognition in art and general literature As a writer of poetry she is represented in many anthologies.