Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith, 1856-1923
Dates
- Existence: 1856 - 1923
Biography
Kate Douglas Wiggins was born on September 28, 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was an educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (1903). In 1878, she started the first free kindergarten in San Francisoco. She also established, with her sister Nora, a training school for kindergarten teachers in the 1880s. Wiggins's other publications include "The Story of Patsy" (1883) and "The Birds' Christmas Carol" (1887). She also published scholarly work on the educational principles of Friedrich Froebel including "Kindergarten Principles and Practice." In 1921, Wiggin and her sister Nora Archibald Smith edited an edition of Jane Porter's "The Scottish Chiefs," an 1809 novel of William Wallace, for the Scribner's Illustrated Classics series, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth.During the spring of 1923, Kate Wiggin traveled to England as a New York delegate to the Dickens Fellowship where he became ill and died on August 24, 1923.