Some of her other works included Cathedral Courtship, A Summer in a Canon, Timothy's Quest, The Story Hour, Kindergarten Chimes, Polly Oliver's Problem, and Children's Rights.

[3][4][1] Wiggin experienced a happy childhood, even though it was colored by the American Civil War and her father's death.

She and her sister Nora were still quite young when their widowed mother moved her little family from Philadelphia to Portland, Maine, then, three years later, upon her remarriage, to the little village of Hollis.

Her mother and another relative had gone to hear Dickens read in Portland, but Wiggin, aged 11, was thought to be too young to warrant an expensive ticket.

In 1873, hoping to ease Albion Bradbury's lung disease, Wiggin's family moved to Santa Barbara, California, where her stepfather died three years later.

A kindergarten training class was opening in Los Angeles under Emma Marwedel (1818–1893),[4][5] and Wiggin enrolled.

[6] Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through writing, first The Story of Patsy (1883), then The Birds' Christmas Carol (1887).

For the rest of her life she grieved; but she also traveled as frequently as she could, dividing her time between writing, visits to Europe, and giving public reading for the benefit of various children's charities.

[9] On her way to England in 1894, Wiggin met George Christopher Riggs, an importer of dry goods, specifically linen.

[10] In the Ellis Island logs from Wiggin's 1894 trip back to New York from Liverpool, the two signed their names next to each other, indicating their closeness.

[4] In 1903 she wrote the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which became an immediate best-seller, as did Rose o' the River in 1905.

For a time, Wiggin lived at Quillcote, her summer home in Hollis, Maine (now listed on the National Register of Historic Places).

Wiggin was an active and popular hostess in New York and in the community of Upper Largo, Scotland, where she had a summer home and where she organized plays for many years, as detailed in her autobiography My Garden of Memory.

[14] Eric E. Wiggin extended her series after years of writing Christian literature, newspaper articles, and other children's books.