This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

You may not have heard of her, but Sarah Josipa Hale

may be the most famous woman in America during the first half of the 1800s. She was well known

as an editor for the most popular subscription magazine in the country at the time, but we have her

to thank for a couple of days off each year.

You see, Hale was nearly single-handedly responsible for Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday.

Here is Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of Sarage Josipha Hale's biography called Lady Editor

to share with us the story of the godmother of Thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale is not very well known in our century, but she was the most famous woman of the 19th century,

or at least the first part of the 19th century.

She was editor of Goody's Ladies' book, which was one of the first national magazines.

It had a huge circulation.

But more than that, she used the magazine to promote ideas that were close to her heart.

She wrote or edited 129 books. Can you imagine this?

She did write something that you probably have heard of, and Mary had a little lamb.

It was published in a magazine for children, so she wrote it and it became popular,

and it was picked up by a man named Lowell Mason, who edited and put together the first songbook for school children.

In the early the first songbook for school children.

In the early 1820s, she was happily married with four children and a fifth on the way. When her husband died suddenly, she had no means of making a living and was desperate to figure out a way

to earn enough money to both take care of her children and educate them in the way to which

she and her husband had aspired. Hale herself was one of the most highly educated women

...