Essays of Augusta Hallock at Norton Hill

Item — Container: Manuscript Shelves

Identifier: MV 1716

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This volume contains the handwritten compositions of Augusta Ann Hallock of Norton Hill in the town of Greenville, New York. Entries are ordered numerically rather than by date, and the first two pages of the book contain an index of composition titles. Compositions are in some cases possibly copied passages delivered by an instructor, and in other cases possibly original work of Augusta. The compositions are as follows:

Valentines; Friends; Composition Day; Twilight; Nothing Particular but Everything General; Leaving School; Intemperance; A Storm at Sea; The Murderer; A Warning; Writing Compositions; Memory; The Life of a Candle; Beauty; Water; Home; Meditations; Twilight Expectations; Beauties of Nature; A Dream; Education; The Discouraged Scholar; Death of Elliot Ackley; Lines on a Bouquet taken from the Grave of Ezra M. Ramsdell; The Contrast; Isaac's Last Good Bye; Lines on my Pink Dress; A Cross Boy; An Enigma; Reflections in a Deserted School House; Another Contrast; Death; A Composition Required; A Comparison; A Remarkable Disclosure; Clouds; A Book Presented; Reflections; A Cold in the Nose; A Reminiscense; Farewell to Our Teacher; To My Watch; Love; A School Teacher out of Patience; First Day and Night of School Teaching; Purity;

Several untitled entries follow these.

Dates

Majority of material found in 1851-1855

Biographical / Historical

Augusta Ann Hallock Elliott (June 10, 1836-July 4, 1886) was born and raised in Norton Hill in the Town of Greenville, New York. She was an attendee of the Greenville Academy, an early and well-regarded Charter School established in 1816 in the hamlet of Greenville, just east of Norton Hill, and became a school teacher upon graduation from that institution. She was engaged to a man named James Alvin Bell from Kanesville, Illinois, but never married as Bell was killed in 1863 while serving in the 8th Illinois Cavalry during the Civil War. Their personal correspondence resides in a collection at the Huntington Library in California, and may shed light on the circumstances of their introduction to one another. In 1866 Augusta married Ansel R. Elliott, apparently moving to Ludlow, Kentucky where she passed in 1886.