Elizabeth Prentiss
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Elizabeth Payson Prentiss (26 October 1818 – 13 August 1878) was a Presbyterian pastor's wife, mother, and author, well known for her hymn "More Love to Thee, O Christ" and the didactic story Stepping Heavenward (1869). Some of her verses were recently compiled in a book published by Solid Ground Christian Books (Golden Hours: Heart-hymns of the Christian Life).
She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, the fifth of eight children (only six survived) of the eminent Congregationalist pastor Edward Payson. The influences of New England Christianity, consisting of the inherited Puritan foundation with added evangelistic, missional, and philanthropic elements, were evident in the Payson family. From an early age Elizabeth exhibited sharp mental abilities, deep and indiscriminatory sympathy, and an exceptional perceptiveness. Combined, these traits made her an ideal author, not only of instructive children's books but also of characteristically warm and insightful letters to family and a wide circle of friends. As a young woman she published some of her children's stories and poems in "The Youth's Companion," a New England religious periodical. In 1838 she opened a small girls' school in her home and took up a Sabbath-school class as well. Two years later she left for Richmond, VA, to be a department head at a girls' boarding school.
In 1845 she married George Lewis Prentiss, a brother of her dear friend Anna Prentiss Stearns, to whom are addressed some of her warmest and most intimate letters. The Prentisses settled in New Bedford, MA, where George became pastor of South Trinitarian Church. After a happy time of transitioning into the duties of a pastor's wife and a housewife, within a period of three months she lost her second and third children – one as a newborn, one at age four. She wrote this poem in that year, 1852, on the occasion of the baby's death:
I thought that prattling boys and girls
Would fill this empty room;
That my rich heart would gather flowers
From childhood's opening bloom.
One child and two green graves are mine,
This is God's gift to me;
A bleeding, fainting, broken heart—
This is my gift to Thee.
Though she continually struggled with poor health, Mrs. Prentiss went on to have three more healthy children. After Rev. Prentiss resigned his charge in New York, the family went abroad to Europe for a couple of years, returned to New York (where Rev. Prentiss pastored the Church of the Covenant), and eventually settled in Dorset, VT, where Mrs. Prentiss would die in 1878 at the age of 60.
After her death, Rev. Prentiss published The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss (1882), for the purpose of fulfilling his wife's wish that the more costly experiences of her life could be used for the consolation of others. Mrs. Prentiss's peculiar trials enabled her to sympathize even more deeply with those who suffered such that, later in life, she declared that she loved the house of mourning better than the house of feasting (see Ecclesiastes 7:2).
Mrs. Prentiss had six children, of whom four survived.
- Annie, b. 1845
- Eddy b. 1848 & d. 1852
- Bessie b. & d. 1852
- M., a girl, b. 1854
- G., a boy, b. fall 1857
- Henry ("Swiss boy"), b. 1859
[edit] Publications
- Little Susy's Six Birthdays, 1853
- Only a Dandelion, and other Stories, 1854
- Henry and Bessie: or, What they did in the Country, 1855
- Little Susy's Six Teachers, 1856
- The Flower of the Family: A Book for Girls, 1856
- Peterchen and Gretchen; or, Tales of Early Childhood, 1860
- The Little Preacher, 1867
- Little Threads; or, Tangle Thread, Silver Thread, and Golden Thread, 1868
- Little Lou's Sayings and Doings, 1868
- Fred and Maria and Me, 1868
- The Old Brown Pitcher, 1868
- Stepping Heavenward, 1869
- Nidworth, and his three Magic Wands, 1869
- The Percys, 1870
- The Story Lizzie Told, 1870
- Six Little Princesses and what they turned into, 1871
- Aunt Jane's Hero, 1871
- Golden Hours: Hymns and Songs of the Christian Life, 1873
- Aunt Jane's Hero',' 1873
- Urbane and His Friends, 1874
- Griselda: A Dramatic Poem in Five Acts, 1876 (trans. from the German by Friedrich Halm)
- The Home at Greylock, 1876
- Pemaquid; a Story of Old Times in New England, 1877
- Gentleman Jim, 1878
- Avis Benson; or, Mine and Thine, with other Sketches, 1879
