Pioneer In Juvenile Literature
J acob, son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Abbott) Abbot, was born in Hallowell November 14, 1803.  After preparing for college at Hallowell Academy, he matriculated in the sophomore class at Bowdoin, where he graduated in 1820.  All of his four brothers, including John Stevens Cabot, the historian, who was almost as widely known as himself, were graduated subsequently at Bowdoin and became noted as divines and educators.            After teaching a year in Portland and completing a three years' course at Andover Theological Seminary, the young divinity student accepted the position of professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College in 1825 but vacated the chair a few months after his marriage to Harriet Vaughan on the eighteenth day of May 1828.  Later, he assumed his first pastorate at Roxbury, Massachusetts.In 1832 the appearance of the first volume of the Young Christian Series marked a new and distinct era in religious literature, but it met with an immediate and enthusiastic reception.  Nine thousand copies were sold during the first year and its popularity soon became equally pronounced in England, France, Germany, and other foreign countries, where translations of the text were necessary.  In after years many of the adult readers of that series publicly admitted that their fundamental or clarified conceptions of Christian character and conduct were derived from the Abbot theory of religion.              After an interval of two years, the first of the Rollo Books followed and it was hailed with much popular acclaim.  The style adopted in the new series was informative rather than moral or didactic.              Removing to a small tract in Farmington in 1837, the Hallowell author erected a frame cottage at "Little Blue Hill," as its site was christened by the owner, and devoted six years of constant attention to the evolution of the Rollo, Lucy, and Jonas series.  His wife died on September 11, 1843, and after a visit to Europe, he changed his residence to New York City, where he was associated with his brothers in educational work at the Abbot schools.  Even the vacated dwelling at Farmington was remodeled into one of their private institutions for boys.  In 1851 he resumed his literary pursuits and continued the publication of juvenile stories.  He had made several supplementary trips to the Old World in the interim, when the death of his second wife, Mary Dana Woodbury, in 1866, after thirteen years of conjugal felicity, soon impaired his health and undermined the sources of inspiration.              Having formed a previous habit of spending his summer seasons in Farmington, Abbot gradually transferred his permanent residence to that town, where he discontinued writing in 1872.  During an exceedingly active life, the voluminous author had written and published, individually, one hundred and eighty books and had participated in the joint authorship and issuance of at least thirty-one more.  That record has never been exceeded by any Maine, nor probably by an American author.  His books dealt with a wide range of religious, literary, educational and historical subjects.  The Rollo Books, comprising twenty-eight volumes, and the Franconia and Young America series present, by themselves, a formidable array.              After ten years of continuous residence at Farmington, during which his time was engrossed mainly with domestic pursuits, the distinguished clergyman, educator and author succumbed to the fatal ravages of a painful illness October 18, 1879.  Among his five surviving children was Lyman Abbot, the well-known clergyman.              While the life story of this popular juvenile writer presents no marked individual traits, no memoir can do adequate justice to his exemplary and uncompromising character as a Christian gentleman.  Accustomed to giving full credence to the ingenuous statements of children, he relied explicitly upon their strong intuitive deductions as a constituent part of the divine emanations of truth.  He was a sincere friend of all humanity, encouraging the intimacy of his neighbors, both youthful and adult, but especially the former, from whom he secured the primitive ideas that could be converted into magic pages through the medium of a facile pen.  In his personal interviews, he appeared to be unprejudiced and always refrained from adverse comment.            While many of his books are classed as moral, they are not dogmatic and the main thread running through them all is informative to the extent of attracting and retaining the interest of varied classes of readers.  It has been claimed by the author's most severe but friendly critic that his historical conclusions were not dependable since they were sometimes derived from doubtful sources and elaborated without suspicion of falsity.  But such defects in the compilation are inherent in every history and the underlying purpose of juvenile literature is amply served when it fulfills an existing demand and meets a constructive need.  That he wrote so much in an entertaining if superficial, manner stamps his unusual record of achievement as the natural consequence of a strong coercive stimulus operating upon a highly imaginative nature.            Abbot is regarded as supreme in his own literary sphere in that his humor is clearly apparent though generally suppressed.  Mark Twain, with lasting credit to himself as a humorist, has since become famous for his ability to present the opposite extreme in wholesome portrayal of youthful fancies and foibles, but with no more permanent influence for good, and no more graceful tribute has ever been paid to any writer of juvenile books than that of the unknown boy who left two matchless pinks upon the Maine author's bier.  As for the permanency of the latter in literacy achievement, it is well to remember that even obsolete factors of civilization must be reckoned with in summing up the final accomplishments of the race.

Written in 1934 by W.D. Spencer