The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, July 1965 - April, 1966 Page: 498
591 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
fail. He alone represented the Protestant Church and he did it at
all hours of the day and night in spite of his terror of the fever.
Mrs. Amelia E. Barr in her book "All the Days of My Life" I
have no doubt tells of the struggle we had after father's death and
at last of her determination to go to New York. I can remember
the anxious days and that particular day that she came to a de-
cision very well. She had been losing money, not making it. She
was walking up and down in her bedroom, Mary and I sitting
subdued and silent, feeling her anxiety and our inability to help.
Suddenly she stood quite still in the middle of the room and said,
"Girls we will go to New York!" It was settled right then and there.
It did not take long to see the Auctioneer or dispose of all her
pretty furniture, not long to pack the trunks, and say goodbye to
friends. Then Mother, Mary, Alice and I all went to the graveyard
to say goodbye to our beloved ones there. Another night in a
hotel, and then we were on board the steamer heading for New
York, and Galveston became a shadow save for those four real graves.
Amelia herself tells the whole story in her remarkable auto-
biography, All the Days of My Life. For a few months after
arrival in New York the family managed to live on the proceeds
of the mother's teaching and tutoring. Then through the advice
and kindness of a friend she wrote and sold an article on condi-
tions in Texas after the, Civil War. Exulting over the check for
$30.00, she exclaimed, "I can write three or four of those things
every week." With the money she rented rooms on Amity Street,
where Poe once lived, close to the Astor Library. And her
astounding writing career began.
At first she wrote newspaper and magazine articles, then stories
and poems, then novels. Jan Vedder's Wife (1884) was her first
"best seller." Four years later she purchased Cherry Croft, a rose-
covered cottage on Storm King Mountain, overlooking the Hud-
son. There she continued to write her novels, facilely and rather
unquestioningly, at the rate of more than two a year. One, Re-
member the Alamo, pictures Sam Houston's Texas. Long before
her death in 1919 she had become one of America's best paid,
most prolific, and most popular novelists.498
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, July 1965 - April, 1966, periodical, 1966; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117144/m1/576/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.