Mary S. B. Shindler

Mary Stanley Bunce Palmer Shindler (born in Beaufort, South Carolina, 15 February 1810; died 1883) was a poet of the southern United States.

Biography

Her father, the Rev. B. M. Palmer, was pastor of a Congregational Church at Beaufort, and when she was three years old he moved with her to Charleston, South Carolina, where she was educated.

Recalling this period of her life, she later said:

“I well remember the delight with which we children used to anticipate our spring and Christmas holidays, which we were sure to spend upon some neighbouring plantation, released from all our city trammels, running perfectly wild, as all city children were expected to do, contracting sudden and violent intimacies in all the negro houses about Easter and Christmas times, that we might have a store of eggs for sundry purposes, for which we gave in exchange the most gaudy cotton handkerchiefs that could be bought in Charleston. It was during these delightful rural visits that what little poetry I have in my nature was fostered and developed, and at an early age I became sensible of a something within me which often brought tears into my eyes when I could not, for the life of me, express my feelings. The darkness and loneliness of our vast forests filled me with indescribable emotions, and above all other sounds, the music of the thousand Eolian harps sighing and wailing through a forest of pines, was most affecting to my youthful heart.”

In Charleston, she was educated by the Misses Ramsay, the daughters of David Ramsay, the historian. The summer of 1825 her parents spent in Hartford, Connecticut, and she was placed for six months at a seminary in the neighbouring town of Wethersfield. In 1826 she was placed at a young ladies’ seminary in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. She pined for her Southern home, and at the expiration of six months was allowed to return to the arms of her parents. She subsequently spent several months at a seminary in New Haven, Connecticut.

In June 1835, Mary Palmer married Charles E. Dana, and moved with him first to New York City, and in 1837 to Bloomington, Iowa. During this time she occasionally wrote little pieces of poetry, but did not publish them. Before her marriage, however, she had written considerably for the Rose-Bud, a juvenile periodical published in Charleston by Mrs. Gilman. On her husband's death, she returned to her family in Charleston.

To give herself mental occupation, she now began to indulge in literary pursuits. She had always been very fond of music, and finding very little piano music that was suitable for Sunday playing, she had for several years been in the habit of adapting sacred words to any song which particularly pleased her. To wean her from her sorrows, her parents encouraged her to continue the practice, and this was the origin of the first work she published, The Southern Harp. At first she had no idea of publishing these little effusions, but having written quite a number of them, she was advised to print a few for the use of herself and friends. The work, however grew under her hands, until finally, becoming much interested in the design, she decided to publish, not only the words, but the music. She visited New York for this purpose in 1840, and the work appeared early in 1841.

In the early 1840's, she experienced a change in her religious views, which attracted considerable attention, and led to her next publication. She had been bred a Calvinist, but during the year 1844 she began to entertain doubts about the doctrine of the Trinity, and finally, to the grief of her revered parents, and numerous friends, early in the year 1845, she avowed herself a Unitarian.

Both her parents died within weeks of each other, and in 1848, she became an Episcopalian. In May of that year, she married the Rev. Robert D. Shindler, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, who was for a time professor in Shelby College, Kentucky. She moved with her husband in 1850 to Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and in 1869 to Nacogdoches, Texas.

Writings

• The Southern Harp (Boston, 1840)
• The Northern Harp (New York, 1841)
• The Parted Family, and other Poems (1842)
• The Temperance Lyre (1842)
• Charles Morton, or the Young Patriot (1843)
• The Young Sailor (1844)
• Forecastle Tour (1844)
• Letters to Relatives and Friends on the Trinity (1845), expressing her doubts on the Trinity during this time in her life. By far the largest of her prose volumes, it appeared in Boston, and was republished in London. It went through several editions, and was finally stereotyped.

She was a frequent contributor to popular periodicals.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Shindler, Mary Stanley Bunce Palmer". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: John Seely Hart, “Mary S. B. Shindler” in The Female Prose Writers of America: With Portraits, 1852.

External links

• Mildred Lewis Rutherford (1906). "Mary Bunce Palmer (Mrs. Shindler)". The South in history and literature: a hand-book of southern authors, from the settlement of Jamestown, 1607, to living writers. The Franklin-Turner Company. pp. 221–222. http://books.google.com/books?id=By8LAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA221.