Margaret Miller Davidson

Margaret Miller Davidson (March 26, 1823 – November 25, 1838) was an American poet. Following in the footsteps of her sister Lucretia Maria Davidson, Margaret wrote from a young age, producing a body of poems and a diary. Her work was edited by Washington Irving after her death by tuberculosis at age fifteen.

Professor Walter Harding wrote in the mid-twentieth century that Davidson "was once of the best-known poets in America."

Biography

Margaret Miller Davidson was born March 26, 1823, in Plattsburg, New York. She was the youngest daughter of Oliver and Margaret Davidson. Margaret was tutored by her mother and never sent to school. Throughout her life, Davidson cared for her frequently ill mother and studied languages, philosophy, and history, in addition to writing poems and a diary.

Davidson died November 25, 1838, in Saratoga. Edgar Allan Poe reviewed Davidson's work favorably, describing her longest poem, Lenore, "As the work of so mere a child, it is unquestionably wonderful."

In the 1971 biographical dictionary Notable American Women, scholar Carlin T. Kindilien wrote about the Davidson sisters' contemporary success: