Thanksgiving song is familiar, but few know writer

Often known by its first line, “Over the river and through the wood,” these famous lyrics come from “The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day,” by Lydia Maria Child of Wayland, Mass.

Child had an interesting, but difficult life. At age 22, she wrote Hobomok (Kessinger Pub.), a novel about a Puritan girl who fell in love with a Native American boy after her fiancé is lost at sea. It was successful, as was her Juvenile Miscellany, the nation’s first children’s magazine, and The Frugal Housewife (Dover Publications), a hugely popular book.

In 1833, her abolitionist views ended her popularity. Her book, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (Applewood Books), was one of the earliest book-length attacks upon slavery. Child claimed that northern businesses made fortunes from it.

The backlash from northerners was strong. Subscriptions were cancelled, book sales fell and publishers refused to accept Child’s new books.

These are the words to her famous song:
Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
the horse knows the way,
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow

Over the river and through the wood,
With a clear blue winter sky,
The dogs do bark,
And children hark,
As we go jingling by

Over the river and through the wood,
And straight through the
barn-yard gate:
We seem to go
Extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait