Abby Maria Hemenway

Born in Ludlow in 1828, and educated at Black River Academy, Abby Maria Hemenway was the editor of the Vermont Historical Gazetter, a five volume compilation of local history, published between 1860 and 1891. For thirty years, Hemenway managed her own publishing empire, collecting, editing, and printing the history of every town in her state, an achievement matched by no one else in the United States. Floods, fires, and chronic indebtedness delayed the work, but in the end the town histories of every Vermont county but Windsor were published. Hemenway never married, and in 1864 joined the Roman Catholic Church. She died in poverty in Chicago in 1890, having continued working to the very end.