Author Howard Glyndon was really Laura C. Redden (deaf poet and author)

General Butler

First Sergeant
Joined
Nov 16, 2017
As a General Butler collector I was glad to find a nice little hard cover book, Idyls of Battle personally inscribed to Butler while the good General at the Metropolitan Hotel on November 14 1864. I suspect Butler was there to keep the peace during the rancorous election of Lincoln, thus avoiding the riots that had earlier plagued the city. Interesting that she had to publish as a man...
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Laura Redden Searing



Laura Redden Searing. Laura Redden Searing (born February 9, 1839 in Somerset County, Maryland) was a deaf poet and journalist. Her first book of poetry published was Idyls of Battle, and Poems of the Rebellion (1864). Her pseudonym is Howard Glyndon.
 
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Holy cow, why isn't she more well known? This is a wonderful story, thank you! Her work is available- of course Hathitrust has it!

Sheet music, lyrics by Howard Glyndon!
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@John Hartwell , have you come across her? It's possible she was a friend? Obviously could have just ' moved ' in the same circles.

Her 152 page book of pro Union poems is a touching work.

Agree! That's a wonderful find! Here it is in Internet Archives, there really is some wonderful work! Thanks so much for the head's up on Laura!
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Sounds from secret chambers / by Laura C. Redden (Howard Glyndon). ... Glyndon, Howard, 1840-1923.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hn6le4&view=1up&seq=7 , 1874


Find A Grave
 
@John Hartwell , have you come across her? It's possible she was a friend? Obviously could have just ' moved ' in the same circles.
I find nothing particularly regarding Gen. Butler. But the second paragraph in this brief review (Boston Transcript, 1 Nov. 1864) probably explains the inscription:
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I particularly found the following, from August 1876, interesting:
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She was clearly a highly intelligent and determined lady.
 
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Laura Catherine Redden Searing graduated from Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton, Missouri where she learned sign language and the American Manual Alphabet. In 1861, she was an editor with the St Louis Republican, writing under the pseudonym of Howard Glyndon.

As it turned out, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. While a Unionist, her paper was much less so. Some of her articles for the Republican did not go over well. Such as....

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She had courage for sure.
 
She was also prophetic regarding the "saturnalia of wholesale slaughter -- of ruin, of desolation, which awaits us." Whichever 'side' one favors, we have to admit that that was Missouri's fate during the war.
 
Great conversation and glad I uncovered the hard cover volume signed by her and given to Butler. Like I said I think was there under Lincoln's order to keep the peace during elections
 
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