Alice Cary (April 26, 1820 - February 12, 1871) was a poet born near Cincinnati, Ohio. Her parents lived on a farm bought by Robert Cary in 1813 in what is now North College Hill, Ohio. He called the 27 acres Clovernook Farm. The farm was 10 miles north of Cincinnati, a good distance from schools, and the father could not afford to give their large family of nine children a very good education. But Alice and her sister Phoebe were fond of reading and studied all they could. When Alice was seventeen and Phoebe thirteen years old they began to write verses, which were printed in newspapers. And in 1849 they published a book called Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary. This made them well-known, and the next year they moved to New York City, where they gave themselves up to writing, and won much fame. While the sisters were raised in a Universalist household and held political and religious views that were liberal and reformist, they often attended Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist services and were friendly with ministers of all these denominations and others. According to Phoebe,
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