The birthplace of nursery-rhyme heroine Mary Sawyer in Sterling, Massachusetts, burned to the ground on Sunday morning. According to "descendant" Diane T. Melone, Mary really did have a little lamb.
Sarah Hale gets the writing credit by some accounts. The school where the events were supposed to have occurred now stands on the grounds of the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., moved there by Henry Ford in 1925.The lamb became attached to Mary, crying when she left it. One day her younger brother, Nathaniel, urged Mary to take the lamb to school with them. Once there, the lamb lay under Mary’s desk and she covered it with a cloak. But when the teacher called Mary to the front of the room, the lamb followed — and the children laughed.
A boy, John Roulstone Jr., ... was visiting Mary’s school when the lamb incident happened.
John wrote a poem about three verses long about Mary and the lamb and gave it to Mary. [Link]
By the way, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and her husband, Columbus Tyler, seem not to have had descendants. They married in 1835 and settled in Somerville, Mass., where Columbus was for many years steward and Mary matron at the McLean Asylum for the Insane. The census records give no indication of children. She died in 1889, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
