Martha Finley
Encyclopedia
Martha Finley was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore
Elsie Dinsmore
Elsie Dinsmore is a children's book series written by Martha Finley between 1867 and 1905.An adapted version has been published, which leaves out several important facts and details.-Original story:...

series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26, 1828, in Chillicothe
Chillicothe, Ohio
Chillicothe is a city in and the county seat of Ross County, Ohio, United States.Chillicothe was the first and third capital of Ohio and is located in southern Ohio along the Scioto River. The name comes from the Shawnee name Chalahgawtha, meaning "principal town", as it was a major settlement of...

, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

. Finley wrote many of her books under the pseudonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton
Elkton, Maryland
The town of Elkton is the county seat of Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 11,893 as of the 2000 census and 14,842 according to current July 2008 census estimates. It is the county seat of Cecil County...

, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, where she moved in 1876.

Martha Finley was born on April 26, 1828, in Chillicothe, Ohio. Her mother died when Martha was quite young, and James Finley, her father, soon remarried. Martha's stepmother, Mary Finley, was a kind and caring woman who always nurtured Martha's desire to learn and supported her ambition to become a writer.

James Finley, a doctor and devout Christian, moved his family to South Bend, Indiana in the mid-1830s. It was a large family: Martha had three older sisters and a younger brother who were eventually joined by two half-sisters and a half-brother. The Finleys were of Scotch-Irish heritage, with deep roots in the Presbyterian Church. Martha's grandfather, Samuel Finley, served in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and was a personal friend of President George Washington. A great-uncle, also named Samuel Finley, had served as president of Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

Martha was well educated for a girl of her times and spent a year at a boarding school in Philadelphia. After her father's death in 1851, she began her teaching career in Indiana. She later lived with an elder sister in New York City, where Martha continued teaching and began writing stories for Sunday school children. She then joined her widowed stepmother in Philadelphia, where her early stories were first published by the Presbyterian Publication Board. She lived and taught for two years at a private academy in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania -- until the school was closed in 1860, just before the outbreak of the War Between the States.

Determined to become a full-time writer, Martha returned to Philadelphia. Even though she sold several stories (some written under the pen name of "Martha Farquharson"), her first efforts at novel-writing were not successful. But during a period of recuperation from a fall, she crafted the basics of a book that would make her one of the country's best known and most beloved novelists.

Three years after Martha began writing Elsie Dinsmore, the story of the lonely little Southern girl was accepted by the New York firm of Dodd Mead. The publishers divided the original manuscript into two complete books; they also honored Martha's request that pansies (flowers, Martha explained, that symbolized "thoughts of you") be printed on the books' covers. Released in 1868, Elsie Dinsmore became the publisher's best-selling book that year, launching a series that sold millions of copies at home and abroad.

The Elsie stories eventually expanded to twenty-eight volumes and included the lives of Elsie's children and grandchildren. Miss Finley published her final Elsie novel in 1905. Four years later, she died less than three months before her eighty-second birthday. She is buried in Elkton, Maryland, where she lived for more than thirty years in the house she built with proceeds from her writing career. Her large estate, carefully managed by her youngest brother, Charles, was left to family members and charities.

The stories of Mildred Keith, Elsie's second cousin, were released as a follow-up to the Elsie books. The Mildred books are considered to be partly autobiographical. Like the fictional Mildred, Martha's family moved to Indiana in the mid-1830s in hopes of a brighter future on the expanding western frontier. Also like Millie, Martha was one of eight children. Her experiences surely provided the setting and likely many of the characters for her Mildred Keith books. In a foreword to one of the books, Miss Finley specifically mentions that the Keith family's journey to Indiana and the sickly season that they faced there, were events from her own childhood.

Martha Finley never married, never had children of her own, but she was a remarkable woman who lived a quiet life of creativity and Christian charity. She died at age 81, having written many novels, stories, and books for children and adults. Her life on earth ended in 1909, but her legacy lives on in the wonderful stories of faith and family that are at the heart of all her work.

List of Publications

  • Ella Clinton, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1856
  • Aunt Ruth, Philadelphia, 1857
  • Marion Harvie, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1857
  • Annandale: A story of the times of the Covenanters, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1858
  • Lame Letty, Philadelphia, 1859
  • Mildred and Elsie, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1861
  • Try: Better Do It, Than Wish It Done, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1863
  • Little Joe Carter, The Cripple, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1864
  • Mysie’s Work, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1864
  • Willie Elton, The Little Boy Who Loved Jesus, Philadelphia, 1864
  • Black Steve; or The Strange Warning, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1865
  • Brookside Farm-House, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1865
  • Hugo and Franz, Philadelphia, 1865
  • Robert and Daisy, Philadelphia, 1865
  • Allan’s Fault, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1866
  • Elsie Dinsmore, Dodd, Mead, which follow Victorian Elsie, 1867
  • Anna Hand, the Meddlesome Girl, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Casella, Dodd, 1868
  • Grandma Foster’s Sunbeam, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Little Dick Positive, Philadelphia, 1868
  • The Little Helper, 1868
  • Little Patience, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Loitering Linus, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Maude’s Two Home, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Millie, or The Little Girl Who Tried To Help Others and Do Them Good, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Stupid Sally, the Poor-House Girl, Philadelphia, 1868
  • Amy and Her Kitten, Philadelphia, 1870
  • Betty Page, Philadelphia, 1970
  • The Broken Basket, Philadelphia, 1870
  • Jamie By the Lake, Philadelphia, 1870
  • Rufus the Unready, Philadelphia, 1870
  • The White Dress, Philadelphia, 1870
  • An Old-Fashioned Boy, Evans, 1871
  • Lilian; or, Did She Do It Right?, Evans, 1871
  • Wanted—A Pedigree, Dodd, 1871
  • Contented Jim, Philadelphia, 1872
  • Honest Jim, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1872
  • How Him Did It, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1872
  • Noll in the Country, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1872
  • Elsie’s Holidays and Roselands, Dodd, 1872
  • Elsie’s Girlhood, Dodd, 1872
  • The Twin Babies, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1872
  • Our Fred, Donohue, 1874
  • The Peddler of La Grave, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1875
  • Aunt Hetty’s Fowls, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Elsie’s Motherhood, Dodd, 1876
  • Harry and His Chickens, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry and His Cousins, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry At Aunt Jane’s, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Christmas in the City, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Fourth of July, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Grandma, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Little Sister, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Ride With Papa, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Harry’s Walk With Grandma, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • The Pewit’s Nest, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Rosa and Robbie, Presbyterian Publications Board, 1876
  • Mildred Keith, Dodd, 1876
  • Elsie’s Children, Dodd, 1877
  • Mildred At Roselands, Dodd, 1879
  • Signing the Contract, Dodd, 1879
  • Elsie’s Widowhood, Dodd, 1880
  • Grandmother Elsie, Dodd, 1882
  • Mildred’s Married Life, Dodd, 1882
  • Elsie’s New Relations, Dodd, 1883
  • Elsie At Nantucket, Dodd, 1884
  • Elsie At the World’s Fair, Dodd, 1884
  • Mildred At Home, Dodd, 1884
  • The Two Elsies, Dodd, 1885
  • Elsie’s Keth and Kin, Dodd, 1886
  • Mildred’s Boys and Girls, Dodd, 1886
  • The Thorn in the Nest, Dodd, 1886
  • Elsie’s Friends At Woodburn, Dodd, 1887
  • Christmas With Grandma Elsie, Dodd, 1888
  • Elsie and the Raymonds, Dodd, 1889
  • Elsie’s Widowhood, Routledge, 1889
  • Elsie Yachting with the Raymonds, Dodd, 1890
  • Elsie’s Vacation, Dodd, 1891
  • Elsie At Viamede, Dodd, 1892
  • Elsie At Ion, Dodd, 1893
  • The Tragedy of Wild River Valley, Dodd, 1893
  • Mildred’s New Daughter, Burt, 1894
  • Elsie’s Journey on Inland Waters, Dodd, 1895
  • Elsie At Home, Dodd, 1897
  • Elsie on the Hudson and Elsewhere, Dodd, 1898
  • Twiddledetwit, A Fairytale, Dodd, 1898
  • Elsie in the South, Dodd, 1899
  • Elsie’s Young Folks in Peace and War, Dodd, 1900
  • Elsie's Womanhood, Dodd, 1901
  • Elsie’s Winter Trip, Dodd, 1902
  • Elsie and Her Loved Ones, Dodd, 1903
  • Elsie and Her Namesakes, Dodd, 1905

List of books in the Elsie Dinsmore series

  1. Elsie Dinsmore (1867) - online at Project Gutenberg
  2. Elsie's Holidays at Roselands (1868) - online at Project Gutenberg
  3. Elsie's Girlhood (1872) - online at Project Gutenberg
  4. Elsie's Womanhood (1875) - online at Project Gutenberg
  5. Elsie's Motherhood (1876) - online at Project Gutenberg
  6. Elsie's Children (1877) - online at Project Gutenberg
  7. Elsie's Widowhood (1880)
  8. Grandmother Elsie (1882) - online at Project Gutenberg
  9. Elsie's New Relations (1883) - online at Project Gutenberg
  10. Elsie at Nantucket (1884) - online at Project Gutenberg
  11. The Two Elsie's (1885) - online at Project Gutenberg
  12. Elsie's Kith and Kin (1886) - online at Project Gutenberg
  13. Elsie's Friends at Woodburn (1887)
  14. Christmas with Grandma Elsie (1888) - online at Project Gutenberg
  15. Elsie and the Raymonds (1889)
  16. Elsie Yachting with the Raymonds (1890)
  17. Elsie's Vacation (1891) - online at Project Gutenberg
  18. Elsie at Viamede (1892)
  19. Elsie at Ion (1893)
  20. Elsie at the World's Fair (1894) - online at Project Gutenberg
  21. Elsie's Journey on Inland Waters (1895)
  22. Elsie at Home (1897) - online at Project Gutenberg
  23. Elsie on the Hudson (1898)
  24. Elsie in the South (1899)
  25. Elsie's Young Folks (1900)
  26. Elsie's Winter Trip (1902)
  27. Elsie and Her Loved Ones (1903)
  28. Elsie and Her Namesakes (1905)

List of books in Mildred Keith series

  1. Mildred Keith(1876)
  2. Mildred at Roselands(1880)
  3. Mildred and Elsie(1881)
  4. Mildred's Married Life, and a Winter with Elsie Dinsmore (1882)
  5. Mildred at Home: With Something about her Relatives and Friends (1884)
  6. Mildred's Boys and Girls(1886)
  7. Mildred's New Daughter (1894)

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