Stories and Nursery Rhymes
Was a Book of Stories by the American Mother Goose Ever Published?
Apr 27, 2006
Grandma Goose, as Elizabeth had become, often tended the small Fleets. She entertained them royally with stories and nursery rhymes. Some of her tales were taken from folklore, some were of her own invention.
The problem was that Grandma Goose drove her son-in-law, now the printer Fleet, almost insane with her singing and storytelling. Just why Grandma Goose's childish amusements ruffled Thomas' feathers is uncertain.
Well, time passed just as it always does, and in 1719, Father Goose passed on to that big flock in the sky, leaving Mother Goose a widow. Nine more years flew away and, in spite of Thomas Fleet's irritation years earlier (perhaps he had been merely henpecked), he published, or so it is believed, a book containing his mother-in-law's stories as well as some others he "borrowed" from other sources.
The existence of the American Mother Goose's book of stories is uncertain today. The only evidence that it did exist is from the telling of it by Thomas Fleet's great-grandson, John Fleet Eliot. Eliot stated in writing, in 1860 that:
Edward A. Crowninshield, a literary gentleman . . . had seen a copy of Fleet's book in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester [England].
Unfortunately, the book was never located in Worcester or elsewhere.
Elizabeth Foster Goose died in Boston in 1757, at the age of 92 and was buried in the Old Granary Burying Ground: What a fitting resting-place for any goose.
Recommended Reading About Other Historical American Women:
Source:
Wallechinsky, David. Irving Wallace. The People's Almanac. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1975.
