Singmaster, Elsie

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SINGMASTER, Elsie

Born 29 August 1879, Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania; died 3 September 1958, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Daughter John A. and Caroline Hoopes Singmaster; married Harold Lewars, 1912 (died 1915)

Elsie Singmaster's father was of German Lutheran stock; her mother, a descendant of English Quakers. Singmaster seems to have developed along the lines of the former. When she was four the family moved to Macungie, Pennsylvania, and later to Brooklyn, New York, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Singmaster graduated from high school. After a year at West Chester Normal School, she attended Cornell for two years. Five years later she entered Radcliffe, graduating in 1907, a member of Delta Gamma and Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1909 she became one of the first women to receive an honorary Litt.D. from Gettysburg College; similar degrees were awarded to her by Pennsylvania College (1916), Muhlenburg College (1929), and Wilson College (1934).

Singmaster married a musician in 1912, but after his death in 1915 she returned to the family home at Gettysburg, where her father was connected with the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Singmaster lived in this historic small town the rest of her life, drawing from it and the surrounding area ample material for her steady writing. From her father and from her surroundings she gained a comprehensive knowledge of the German immigrants who settled so much of Pennsylvania. And with amazing industry she reproduced in fiction (both adult and juvenile) their way of life, their mores, their quaint turns of speech. Creating a typical rural village, Millerstown, she peopled it with appealing characters who appear and reappear throughout her fiction. Occasionally, she builds a story around an historic figure and at times she incorporates actual events into her plot.

From the beginning of Singmaster's career—while she was still in college—magazines were glad to buy her stories; she remarked once that the editors' interest in those first years was probably caught more by the "local color" she gave than by any real literary merit. Kathy Gaumer (1915) was praised for its picture of the Pennsylvania Germans, but as time went on critics pointed out the technical excellence of her fiction as seen in structure, characterization, and comprehension of life. Hers is perhaps the first fiction to emphasize the importance of the German settlers of Pennsylvania.

History was one of Singmaster's special interests. She wrote several history books for children, as well as a popular life of Martin Luther (published in 1917, on the 400th anniversary of the Reformation). Living most of her life in Gettysburg, Singmaster was able to do a great deal of thorough research on the famous battle, research which she used to good effect in her novels.

Perhaps Singmaster's most widely known work is her controversial I Speak For Thaddeus Stevens (1947), a life of the forceful Pennsylvania congressman who advocated the sternest measures of Reconstruction. It is sensitively written; Singmaster tries to show the reasons behind Stevens' passionate advocacy of chastisement for the South, but some reviewers felt Singmaster showed too much partiality for her subject. It remains, however, a vivid picture of a brilliant, iron-willed man who fought for what he considered was right.

I Speak for Thaddeus Stevens is one of Singmaster's outstanding achievements, and it may be ranked with her imaginative recreation of the Gettysburg battle and her beautifully wrought pictures of Pennsylvania German life as her contribution to American literature.

Other Works:

When Sarah Saved the Day (1909). When Sarah Went to School (1910). Gettysburg (1913). Emmeline (1916). The Long Journey (1917). Short Life of Martin Luther (1917). Basil Everman (1920). John Baring's House (1920). Ellen Levis (1921). Bennet Malin (1922). The Hidden Road (1923). A Boy at Gettysburg (1924). Bred in the Bone (1925). Book of the Constitution (1926). Book of the United States (1926). Book of the Colonies (1927). Keller's Anna Ruth (1926). "Sewing Susie" (1927). Virginia's Bandit (1928). What Everybody Wanted (1928). You Make Your Own Luck (1929). A Little Money Ahead (1930). The Young Ravenals (1932). Swords of Steel (1933). The Magic Mirror (1934). Stories of Pennsylvania (3 vols., 1937-1938). Rifles for Washington (1938). The Loving Heart (1939). Stories to Read at Christmas (1940). A High Wind Rising (1942). The Isle of Que (1948). I Hear of a River: The Story of Pennsylvania's Susquehanna (1950).