Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781481283380)

Kate Douglas Wiggin was born Kate Douglas Smith on September 28, 1856, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the older of two girls. When her father died during the Civil War, her mother moved the family to Portland, Maine. Her mother then remarried and had another child; a boy. Kate's education was spotty, sometimes being tutored by her stepfather, then to three additional schools. The family moved to Santa Barbara, California in 1873, hoping to remedy her stepfather's lung problems, but he died in 1876. In 1878, Kate founded the first free Kindergarten in San Francisco, then began training other teachers. In 1881, she married Samuel Bradley Wiggin, a lawyer, and was forced to resign from her teaching position. They had no children and he died in 1889. Wiggin began writing books to raise money for the school, then later, other children's charities. In 1895, she married George Christopher Riggs, a New York City businessman. In 1903, she wrote her most famous work, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," which became an immediate bestseller and years later, was made into a movie starring Shirley Temple. In 1923, Kate traveled to England as a delegate to the Dickens Fellowship. There, she caught pneumonia and died on August 24, 1923, at the age of 66. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered over the Saco River in Maine.