Rebecca Hammond Lard

Rebecca Hammond Lard (Laird) (born Rebecca Hammond; March 7, 1772 – September 28, 1855), is called by some critics "the first poet in Indiana". Her poetry reflects on the lives of the early people in Indiana Lard's works are mainly religious and meditative in tone, but draw their inspiration in part from the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil. She is best known for Indiana's first book of poetry, On the Banks of the Ohio, a poem she is believed to have written. The following month, she was baptized at Mattapoisett in Rochester, Massachusetts. At age ten, Rebecca moved with her father's family from Rochester to Woodstock, Vermont.

At the age of fourteen Rebecca began to teach at a school; she became a teacher despite a lack of schooling herself but relied on her own talents. Her brother, Jabez Delano Hammond, followed in her footsteps and began teaching at the age of fifteen, eight years later. Hammond continued to read and practice medicine in Reading, Vermont, and also to read and practice law in Cherry Valley, New York, where he was elected a member of Congress. Rebecca would later dedicate her first book to this brother.

Family

Rebecca Hammond married Samuel Laird on February 12, 1801, in Woodstock, Vermont and had four children. She continued to teach, being her chief occupation there. About 1807 Samuel moved the Laird family to Hancock, Vermont, and from there to Cherry Valley, New York, where her brother was living at that time. From there, Samuel decided to migrate to Indiana. She was one of the first women school teachers in Jennings county The epitaph on her tombstone reads: "she has done what she could".

Works Miscellaneous Poems on Moral and Religious Subjects (1820) The Banks of the Ohio (1823)