"Sarah began teaching young boys and girls in a small school not far from her home [in Newport, New Hampshire] ...

Sarah was surprised one morning to see one of her students, a girl named Mary, enter the classroom followed by her pet lamb.

The lamb stayed nearby till school was dismissed and then ran up to Mary looking for attention and protection.

[3][4] As a young girl, Mary kept a pet lamb that she took to school one day at the suggestion of her brother.

Mary recalled, "Visiting school that morning was a young man by the name of John Roulstone; a nephew of the Reverend Lemuel Capen, who was then settled in Sterling, Massachusetts.

It was the custom then for students to prepare for college with ministers, and, for this purpose, Roulstone was studying with his uncle.

The young man was very much pleased with the incident of the lamb, and, the next day, he rode across the fields on horseback, to the little old schoolhouse and handed me a slip of paper, which had written upon it the three original stanzas of the poem.

A 2-foot (0.61 m) tall statue and historical marker representing Mary's Little Lamb stands in the town center.

Mary Sawyer's house, located in Sterling, Massachusetts, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, but was destroyed by arson on August 12, 2007.

‘And you each gentle animal In confidence may bind, And make them follow at your call, If you are always kind.’ In the 1830s, Lowell Mason set the nursery rhyme to a melody.

[citation needed] A number of parodies of the rhyme have entered folklore, such as this example: Mary had a little lamb, Her father shot it dead.

[15] Sesame Street also created a well known parody of the rhyme called ″Mary had a Bicycle″, which was sung by one of their scrapped characters, Don Music:[16] Mary had a Bicycle, It was painted Red as Fire.