This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

And I'm Holly Fry. Sometime last year, some folks here at work

asked if we had anything planned for the show to go along with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of

Independence that's being celebrated this year. I think it is safe to say that there is not a year in which either of us would

really be interested in the kind of like over-the-top patriotism and national pride that is

usually expected to go along with that kind of a milestone observance.

We especially were not in the mood for that when we were asked, 2025.

I did, though, go looking around to see if there was anything that was kind of more off the beaten path that might spark my interest and also let us say to the folks at work, yes, there will be something related on the calendar.

Our recent episode on Casimir Pulaski unrelated to that conversation,

that was just a coincidence.

Somehow, in my search for something that would let us say,

yes, we do have something on the calendar,

I found Rebecca Smith Pollard, who also published under the name Kate Harrington.

And her connection to the U.S. semi-Quincennial is that she published a book of poems to mark the U.S.

Centennial in 1876.

That is not much of a connection.

And this episode is also mostly not about that.

Because Rebecca Smith Pollard's major influence was not this book of poems that she published.

...