Luella J. B. Case | |
|---|---|
 portrait of Louella J. B. Case by John Brewster Jr. | |
| Born | Luella Juliette Bartlett December 30, 1807 Kingston, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Died | 1857 Kingston |
| Occupation | author |
| Genre | books, contributor to periodicals, hymns |
| Spouse |
Eliphalet Case (m. 1828) |
| Relatives |
|
Luella J. B. Case (née, Bartlett; December 30, 1807 – 1857) was a 19th-century American author. She wrote several popular books and was a contributor to various periodicals,[1] including The Rose of Sharon, The Ladies' Repository, and The Universalist Review among others.[2] Affiliated with the Universalist church, she also wrote hymns.
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Luella Juliette Bartlett was born in Kingston, New Hampshire, December 30, 1807. She was the eldest daughter[2] of Dr. Levi Bartlett[3] (1763-1828) and Abigail Stevens Bartlett[4] (1774-1840). Levi, a physician, judge, politician, and postmaster,[5] was the eldest son of Gov. Josiah Bartlett,[6] Governor of New Hampshire, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and upon the memoir of whose life Case was engaged at the time of her last illness.[7] Case's only sister, Junia, was the wife of Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith.[2] She also had a brother, Levi, a physician.[8] Through Josiah, Case and her sister were affiliated with the Daughters of the American Revolution.[9]
On May 8, 1828, she married Eliphalet Case, then of Lowell, Massachusetts, and since that time, resided mostly there, as well as Portland, Maine and Cincinnati, Ohio.[7][10] Mr. Case was an editor of several newspapers, and long-time postmaster at Lowell.[1] While residing in Portland, Mr. Case was editor of the Eastern Argus.[2] About 1845, the Cases emigrated to the West, and soon after, he became one of the editors and proprietors of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Mrs. Case contributed to the columns of the Enquirer several poems on Western themes. Many of her poems and short articles which appeared in the Enquirer attracted the attention of other journals, and were largely quoted with generous praise.[7] In addition to poems and prose, she also wrote hymns.[11]
Well-read in current literature, she wrote little, but with a purpose. She was a contributor to The Rose of Sharon (a Universalist annual edited by her friend, Sarah Carter Edgarton Mayo),[12] as well as to Mayo's Miscellany.[3] She wrote for the Universalist Quarterly, and The Ladies' Repository, and to many of the denominational papers.[13] Case was a contributor to the Star of Bethlehem, edited by Rev. Thomas Thayer and Rev. Abel C. Thomas. Thayer said of her, "She at least, if any one, could say that she never wrote a line, which dying she would wish unwritten."[7]
In 1848, Case left her husband and returned to Kingston.[12] About 1850, Mr. Case removed his family to Patriot, Indiana, near which town he cultivated a farm.[14]
Case died in 1857, in the home of her childhood, in Kingston, though the date is unclear. Hanson (1882) and Tenney (1913) record it as October 10, 1857;[7][13] Levi Bartlett (1876) records it as October 30, 1857;[1] while Coggeshall (1861) records it as September 1857.[15] While Zboray & Zboray (2013) mention that Case was "ever-burdened with family duties",[16] at her death, there were no living descendants.[9]
Her correspondence is held in a collection in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository.[17]
