Sweet Brier Petals
The life and poetry of Van Buren Lockwood
Van Buren Lockwood (1829-1905) was born in Roxbury, Connecticut, and finished his life there. However, he lived all over the country before settling back at his old homestead. Early life as a grocery clerk led him to seek work in New York City, and soon after he forged a partnership with a photographer which led him to move down south. Unfortunately, “one morning, he arrived at the office, to find partner and business vanished.” Van Buren made a fresh start and headed west to San Francisco, where the gold rush was in full swing and business opportunities abounded. There he found another business partner, and this time the collaboration flourished. Though their business and friendship with a success, Van Buren missed New England, and moved back to begin his own very successful mercantile business.
In 1860, when Van Buren was 31, he married a German woman named Alice Benner (listed in one census under the name of Anne). She was about a decade younger at the time. Sadly, although family remember Alice as “a woman of culture and education,” she suffered from mental illness and became quite ill within a few years of the marriage. Van Buren sold his business in order to travel with her, hoping that “a change of surroundings would keep off the dreaded illness.” They traveled for several years but the strategy was unsuccessful, and in the end his wife was institutionalized.
Van Buren had also lost two beloved brothers in the years leading up to Alice’s illness. His great-niece Clara Rosina Hoyt Lockwood later described the period that followed her institutionalization as one of great sadness that became too great for him to bear. As Clara later wrote, “For years, he tried to keep her with him, but always she would have to stay away longer, until discouraged and heart-broken, he had to give her up. From that time, he lost all interest in active life; he spent his money as fast as he had made it. Friends and relatives were scarcely able to sympathize with him, and often were strongly irritated by his weakness. For twenty years, he Iived alone in the old homestead where he was born, apparently idle.”
What brought him back to life may have been his family. While Van Buren never had children of his own, his sister Harriet’s children and grandchildren adored him, and began to reconnect him with the world again. Clara recalled her own happy times visiting him at his home, especially in the natural surroundings of the old homestead. Around this time Van Buren began to write poetry, which remained his focus until the end of his life. He demurred at being called a poet, thinking himself too poorly educated to deserve that title, but Clara notes that others “spoke of him as ‘the Roxbury poet,’ or addressed him as ‘John Burroughs Lockwood.’”
The family still retains a copy of Van Buren’s book of poetry, “Sweet Brier Petals.” Clara wrote an introduction for it under the pseudonym C. R. Hathaway, offering a brief biography of her great-uncle, To read it as well as Van Buren Lockwood’s poetry, click on the image below.
