Oberholtzer, Sara (Louisa) Vickers

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OBERHOLTZER, Sara (Louisa) Vickers

Born 20 May 1841, Uwchlan, Pennsylvania; died 2 February 1930, Germantown, Pennsylvania

Daughter of Paxson and Ann Lewis Vickers; married John Oberholtzer, 1862; children: two sons

The oldest of nine children, Sara Vickers Oberholtzer was raised in a Quaker family and attended Friends' Boarding School and later Millersville State Normal School. In 1862 she married a Philadelphia merchant; they had two sons.

Oberholtzer was a poet, novelist, and advocate of school savings banks. She supported numerous social and philanthropic activities and participated in the temperance movement. Violet Lee, and Other Poems (1873) is a collection of simple, unpretentious poems which treat themes of nature and ordinary life. Come for Arbutus, and Other Wild Bloom (1882) contains poems on the sentiments of joy and sorrow as well as commemorative poems on Lucretia Mott and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The volume is dedicated to John Greenleaf Whittier. The hymns, memorial poems, and seasonal poetry in Daisies of Verse (1886) are more somber than those in Souveniers of Occasions (1892), which are dedicated to her sons as the "joy-giving, living poems of my heart and life." In Here and There: Songs of Land and Sea That Come to Me (1927), human sentiment is explored in its relation to land and sea. In this last, more highly focused collection of poems, Oberholtzer includes hymns and songs, poems translated from German, and a commemorative tribute to Frances Willard.

Oberholtzer's only novel, Hope's Heart Bells (1884), is a story of 19th-century Quaker life in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The lives and loves of two young women provide the forum for a discussion of ideal love and marriage. Both Hope Willis, a trusting, patient, pure Quaker, and her cousin Nellie, a noble, energetic, and intellectual woman, reject the convention and sham of contemporary married life and the materialism which pervades society. Hope ultimately marries Gus Osborn, a childhood friend and son of her mother's former sweetheart. Nellie, a doctor, marries a man who will allow her to work and will regard her as an equal. These are marriages of strength and purity that God, not man, has sealed.

In 1888, Oberholtzer began to promote the establishment of school savings banks, a program to inculcate thrift in public school children. Under this program, involved teachers collected money weekly from students for deposit in local savings banks. Oberholtzer was both National and World Women's Christian Temperance Union Superintendent of School Savings Banks, and for 16 years she edited and personally published Thrift Tidings (1907-23), a magazine for school savings bank advocates. In this publication and several pamphlets, the most famous of which was School Savings Banks (1914), Oberholtzer explained the history and value of the banks, published testimonials to their success, provided statistics on their development in the U.S. and abroad, and delineated various methods of collecting monies, tabulating deposits, and banking savings.

Oberholtzer's advocacy of school savings banks as well as her prolific output of sentimental poetry ensure her a place as a diverse, miscellaneous writer. Her most important artistic achievement was her novel, Hope's Heart Bells, in which she not only portrays the uniqueness of 19th-century Quaker life but creates two strong female characters who by their rejection of contemporary mores exemplify the highest values of the Quaker tradition.