Little Grandmother

On New Year's Day in 1800, a baby named Patience enters a large household in Perseverance, the story's name for a Maine town. News of George Washington's death soon interrupts the family's happiness, bringing out the nurse's anxieties and Mrs. Lyman's calm confidence. Sophie May follows the childhood of the girl who will become Grandma Parlin, beginning with a busy home, a patchwork quilt and the hopes her mother holds for her ninth child.

As Patty grows, the customs of her community become part of her daily experience. At church she admires Elder Lovejoy and tries to sit quietly through a sermon she struggles to understand. Sunday evenings bring the children together in their mother's bedroom for catechism lessons and Bible stories. This children's novel gives readers a close view of early nineteenth-century family life through a child's concerns. Its household details, church routines and gentle comic observations place Christian teaching within the everyday business of growing up.