Kate Douglas Wiggin

The Story of Patsy Kate Douglas Wiggin

It was a hard-working and bustling place, but a loving and joyous one -- that kindergarten by Silver Street where I was working. I grew to knew all my eighty charges, for their fusses, their foibles, their tantrums and their trilling laughter. Then one day I was surprised to have someone knocking -- for admittance. A boy! -Kin yer take me in, Miss Kate?- said he. -My name's Patsy. I bin waitin' this yer long whiles fur to git in.- -Why, my dear little boy, - I said, gazing dubiously at him, -you're too -- big, aren't you? We have only tiny people here, you know, children not six years old.- -Well, I'm nine by the book, but I ain't more 'n scerce six along o' my losing them three year.- -What do you mean, child? How could you lose three years?- -I lost 'em on the back stairs, don't yer know. My father he got fightin' mad when he was drunk, and pitched me down two flights of 'em, and my back was most clean broke in two, so I couldn't git out o' bed forever -- till just now! Kin yer take me in, Miss Kate?- ............ Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, 1856 - August 24, 1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor. Wiggin went to California to study kindergarten methods. She began to teach in San Francisco with her sister Nora Smith assisting her, and the two were instrumental in the establishment of over 60 kindergartens for the poor in San Francisco and Oakland. She moved from California to New York, and having no kindergarten work on hand, devoted herself to literature. She sent The Story of Patsy and The Bird's Christmas Carol to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. who accepted them at once. Besides the talent for story-telling, she was a musician, sang well, and composed settings for her poems. She was also an excellent elocutionist. Her first literary work was Half a Dozen Housekeepers, a serial story which she sent to St. Nicholas. After the death of her husband in 1889, she returned to California to resume her kindergarten work, serving as the head of a Kindergarten Normal School. Some of her other works included Cathedral Courtship, A Summer in a Canon, Timothy's Quest, The Story Hour, Kindergarten Chimes, Polly Oliver's Problem, and Children's Rights