Poet’s birthday

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born on this day near Haverhill, Massachusetts (1807). Whittier was raised on a debt-ridden farm, attended school only 12 weeks a year, and had to walk several miles to borrow books on biography or travel since his house contained only a single almanac. All of his life, Whittier suffered from the effects of the hard physical labor of working on a farm. He was a newspaper editor, abolitionist, state senator, and poet. He wrote the poem “Snowbound” in 1865, which made him enough money to retire on. (Source: The Writer’s Almanac)