Wiggin, Kate Douglas

Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith),

1856–1923, American author and educator, b. Philadelphia. In San Francisco she organized the first free kindergartens on the Pacific coast (1878) and with her sister established a training school for kindergarten teachers. As part of her teaching career she wrote her first book, The Story of Patsy (1883). The most popular among her many later works for children were The Birds' Christmas Carol (1887), Timothy's Quest (1890), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), and Mother Carey's Chickens (1911).

Bibliography

See her autobiography, My Garden of Memory (1923); biography by her sister, Nora A. Smith (1925).

Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith)

(1856–1953) author, educator; born in Philadelphia, Pa. Raised in Maine, where her widowed mother moved to, she attended various schools in the Northeast before moving to California (1873) with her mother and stepfather. She took a course to be a kindergarten teacher and from 1877 on was active in operation of kindergartens and promoting the kindergarten movement in California. She married in 1881, moved to New York City in 1884, and after her husband's death in 1889 she began to concentrate on writing. Among her numerous books for children, her best known are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903) and Mother Carey's Chickens (1911). She also wrote some books for adults drawing on her many trips to Europe, and with her sister, Nora Smith, she wrote a three-volume book about the kindergarten movement, The Republic of Childhood (1895–96).