Hannah D. Pittman

[1] Her mother, Maria Thompson, was a well-known writer of her day, a regular correspondent of The Country Gentleman and Coleman's Rural World.

[1] While on the staff of the Post-Dispatch, Pittman wrote several children's plays for Professor Mahler, which were presented at Saratoga during the summer season, and later in 1883, in collaboration with Professor Robyn, wrote her most ambitious dramatic work, a comic opera, which was presented at the Pickwick Summer Garden Theater by a professional company, with Laetitia Fritsch in the title role.

While so engaged, she wrote a number of short stories illustrating the condition between masters and slaves during and immediately after the Civil War.

It was placed in nearly all of the college libraries in the Southern and Western States, as of historic value, from which may be learned from one upon the firing line of memory, the truth of the amazing situation during and following the Civil War.

It is a tragic retelling of an old tale convincingly related, giving tone and color to what appears as an incident in the history of a great State.

The delicate subject is carefully handled and coming, as the book did, when the Thaw tragedy was absorbing public notice, the Heart of Kentucky attracted much attention.

In an ancient little cemetery in a rural district of Central Kentucky may be found a large granite slab covering the resting-place of an unhappy couple who passed out of life together one summer morning early in the nineteenth century.

Inscribed on the stone are several verses written by the wife while voluntarily occupying, contrary to all law and precedent, a cell with her husband.

"[1] Pittman's other stories, Go Forth and Find (1910) (inspired by Chauncey Depew's address to the graduates of the Medico-Chirurgical College at Philadelphia, May 5, 1907), Get Married, Young Men and The Heart of a Doll (1908), have proven popular successes.

On journeys to the Southern cities Hannah Pittman accompanied her husband and became so much impressed with scenes and incidents in the lives of the people with whom she came in contact that she decided to begin writing short stories, as referred to before, which were later incorporated in her first novel.