Mary's Lamb

Mary Sawyer often helped her father when baby lambs were born in early spring. One frigid March morning, when she was about nine years old, she discovered a new born lamb that had been abandoned by its mother. The baby lamb was scarcely breathing.

Mary begged her father to let her take the tiny creature into the house to try to save it. Against his better judgement, he allowed her to try. Even though her father told her it would not live, Mary sat in front of the fireplace all night, holding the lamb. From time to time she fed it catnip tea, drop by drop.

In a few days the lamb was able to walk. It was then that Mary’s father insisted that it would have to go back in the barn with the rest of the flock. Again, Mary implored her father to let her keep the lamb for a short time in the woodshed attached to the house.

As there were no other children nearby for Mary to play with, the lamb became her playmate. They were inseparable.

Mary Elizabeth Sawyer was born in Sterling, Massachusetts, on March 22, 1806. She attended the one-room schoolhouse which stood on Redstone Hill. Polly Kimball was the teacher at the Redstone School where she taught all the grades.

One day Mary and her brother Nat discovered the lamb following them to school. They decided to take the lamb with them. When they got to the schoolhouse, the teacher had not yet arrived. Mary put the lamb underneath a blanket. Very contented, the lamb did not make a sound.

A visitor came to the Redstone School that day. He was John Roulstone whose uncle was Reverend Lemuel, minister of the village church.

Mary was called upon to recite a piece of poetry. As she sauntered to the front of the school room, her pet lamb followed behind, clattering down the aisle. Everyone guffawed, except Mary who was mortified. However, John Roulstone was quite amused. The teacher asked Mary to take the lamb outside until noon, when she should take it home.

The next day John Roulstone rode across the meadow to the school again. He handed Mary Sawyer a piece of paper. He had written a poem:

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow,

And every-where that Mary went,

The lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day.

That was against the rule;

It made the children laugh and play,

To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out;

And still it lingered near,

And wait patiently about,

Till Mary did appear

One day, when the lamb was four years old, it met with an unforeseen mishap. Mary and the lamb were in the barn, and Mary was feeding the cows when one cow lowered its head and struck the lamb with its horns. The lamb died in Mary’s arms and this caused the owner great anguish.

Throughout her long life, Mary often told the story and wrote letters about her pet. Many times she copied the poem which John Roulstone had written.

In 1830 the verses were printed in a small collection of poems, put together by Sarah J. Hales, editor of a popular magazine for women and perhaps the most influential American woman among her contemporaries. The printed poem contained additional verses. It has been said that Mrs Hale composed the entire poem, but Mary claimed that John Roulstone was the creator of the first sixteen lines.

The verse is well known to most of us. When Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph, the verse came to mind in the laboratory. The first words ever reproduced on a phonograph were “Mary had a little lamb.”

Mary’s mother had used the first fleece that was sheared from Mary’s lamb to knit two pairs of stockings which Mary kept for many years. When Mary was quite elderly, she gave her prized possession to help raise money to preserve the Old South Meeting House in Boston. The stockings were unravelled, and bits of the wool were attached to cards bearing Mary’s signature. These cards were subsequently sold and about $100 was raised.

The Redstone School attended by Mary was eventually relocated to South Sudbury, Massachusetts. It is now a part of the Wayside Inn Complex which was restored in 1926 by Henry Ford. Outside the schoolhouse a bronze plaque is embedded in a huge rock for future generations to read:

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB

DMU Timestamp: February 06, 2022 15:33

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