Marion Harland: a.k.a. Mary Terhune

By Linda Harris Sittig

I discovered Marion purely by accident.

Last month, I stumbled upon a used book warehouse that advertised old, historic books. The temperature outside blistered at 98 degrees, and the AC inside the cavernous space was temporarily out of order, but several fans blew air around. I couldn’t resist. The owner asked what area of history I liked, and I replied that I write about Strong Women.

He pointed me to an area of stacks, and off I went. Not long afterward, I discovered an old book, first published in 1893 and then reprinted in 1903. The title was “Women Authors of Our Day in Their Homes.” Intrigued, I opened to the Table of Contents and saw the first chapter devoted to Marion Harland. I had never heard of her, but her residence was listed as Pompton, New Jersey – fourteen miles from my childhood home.

I recognized Pompton, not only for its proximity to our family house, but also because it was where the celebrated author Albert Payson Terhune had lived. And I knew all about Albert Payson Terhune because his books made me a reader. He penned three novels about his beloved collie, Lad, and I had read and reread each one.

Now, could it be a coincidence that Marion Harland and Albert Payson Terhune both lived in the same area and knew each other?

I quickly googled Mr. Terhune in the hopes that Ms. Harland might be mentioned. But, no. Then I dove into the chapter of the Women Authors book that focused on Marion Harland and read that her summer home was known as Sunnybank.

Whoa, Sunnybank was the setting for the Lad stories. This could not be a coincidence. I knew every detail about Sunnybank from the Lad novels. For my 10^th birthday, my father even drove me to Pompton to stand at the foot of the drive to Sunnybank, where Lad had roamed the fields.

HOW I FINALLY FOUND MARION

I read the entire chapter on Marion, and A.P. Terhune was never mentioned, but her husband’s name was Dr. Terhune. The plot thickened. Next, I googled Marion Harland. Her real name was Mary Virginia Terhune, born in late December 1830 in Amelia County, Virginia. Mary must have been a remarkable child, as her first novel was published at the age of fifteen.

At the age of 26, she met and married Edward Payson Terhune, who had recently been ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Mary was now the busy wife of a minister, but she continued to write and kept her pen name, Marion Harland. By 1859, the Terhune family had moved from Virginia to New Jersey and, in 1861, decided to build a summer home overlooking Pompton Lakes in Wayne, New Jersey. Mary christened the estate Sunnybank because she loved watching the sunlight shimmer on the banks of the lake.

Throughout her entire life, as a minister’s wife and mother of six children, Mary never stopped writing. In the 1870s, she wrote A Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. It became an instant bestseller, and stayed in print for another 50 years. Although Mary already had several novels to her credit, she switched to cookbooks, biographies, travel guides, and histories, where her trademark practicality and witty text encouraged readers to broaden their knowledge.

Sadly, three of her children did not survive childhood, and Mary openly admitted that she channeled her grief through writing. Mary Virginia Terhune died in her nineties, and despite eventually going blind, she completed her last novel at the age of 88 and dictated her final works to a secretary. During her lifetime, Mary wrote twenty-five novels, twenty-five homemaking books, three volumes of short stories, an 18-year newspaper column for female readers, several nonfiction books, as well as numerous essays and articles for magazines.

And she passed her love for writing onto her three surviving children, all of whom became authors themselves. Albert Payson Terhune was her youngest child.

Today, in northern New Jersey, there are nine elementary schools named after her son, Albert Payson Terhune, including Payson Road, Terhune Avenue, and even a Ladd Street.

MARION/MARY AND HER LEGACY

However, it seems that the only lasting tribute to Mary Virginia Terhune is the existence of Sunnybank, which was donated by the Terhune family to the town of Wayne for development into a public park in 1969. Mary’s writings are now only available through rare book channels, and the house at Sunnybank was razed. But the sunlight still shimmers on the banks of Pompton Lakes.

I am so grateful to two people for this month’s blog: Judith Gage and Steve Herring, who guided me to Steve’s warehouse, The Alcove, in Tarboro, NC, where I discovered Marion.

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As I sit in my writing office today, the heat of summer has finally broken, and I am doing my last ‘read through edit’ of my next to be published book. Here is the blurb to entice readers: In CHASING THE TIDES, two women separated by eighty years find refuge and strength at the same weathered beach cottage on the windswept Georgia coast. Bound by blood, bravery, and the tides, past and present collide at Comraich-by-the-Sea.

STAY TUNED!!

~ LINDA😊

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