Kate Harrington

Kate Harrington, born Rebecca Harrington Smith and later known as Rebecca Smith Pollard, was an American teacher, writer and poet. Biography She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1831. She spent her most productive years in Iowa. Her father, Prof. Nathaniel Ruggles Smith, was a playwright and an authority on Shakespeare, whose interpretations gained the attention of both Edwin Forrest and John Wilkes Booth. Her father's work on public presenting became the basis for Samuel Kirkham's English Grammar, which proved very influential on Abraham Lincoln. She was married to New York City poet and editor Oliver I. Taylor. Harrington was the anonymous author of Emma Bartlett, or Prejudice and Fanaticism, a fictional reply to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, intended to expose the hypocrisy of Know-Nothingism. Harrington’s family moved to Ohio, then Kentucky, where Harrington worked as a teacher. Later, she taught in Chicago. Harrington lived in various Iowa cities, including Farmington, Keosauqua, Burlington, Ft. Madison and Keokuk. She began her writing career with the Louisville Journal, whose editor opposed secession and was an important influence in keeping Kentucky in the Union. Samuel Clemens would later recall "setting up" the type for some of her poems published in his brother's newspaper office. In her Letters from a Prairie Cottage, Harrington included a children's corner with tales about taming and raising animals and of a cat who adopted orphan chicks. Harrington also wrote other children’s books, including a primer and a speller. Pollard's work in the field of reading represented a pioneer effort in terms of creating a sequential reading program of intensive synthetic phonics, complete with a separate teacher's manual and spelling and reading books, and moving into a broad based graded series of literature readers.