Sarah Elizabeth Mary Knowles Bolton (September 15, 1841 – February 21, 1916) was an American writer. She was born in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1866, she married Charles E. Bolton, a merchant and philanthropist. She wrote extensively for the press, was one of the first corresponding secretaries of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (N.W.C.T.U.), and was associate editor of the Boston Congregationalist (1878–81). Bolton traveled for two years in Europe, studying profit-sharing, female higher education, and other social questions. Her writings encouraged readers to improve the world about them through faith and hard work.
Early years and education
Sarah Elizabeth Mary Knowles was born in Farmington, Connecticut, on September 15, 1841, to parents John Segar and Mary Elizabeth Knowles (née Miller). John descended from Henry Knowles, who moved to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, from London, England, in 1665. Her grandmother, Mary Carpenter, was descended from Elizabeth Jenckes, sister of Joseph Jenckes, Governor of Rhode Island. Her mother's ancestry included Nathaniel Stanley, of Hartford, Connecticut, Lieutenant Colonel of First Regiment in 1739; Assistant Treasurer, 1725–49; Treasurer, 1749–55, and from Colonel William Pynchon, one of the 26 incorporators of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts.
At the age of 17, she became a member of the family of her uncle, Colonel H. L. Miller, a lawyer of Hartford, whose extensive library was a delight, and whose house was a center for those who loved scholarship and refinement. The aunt was a person of wide reading, exquisite taste and social prominence. There, the young girl met Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia H. Sigourney, and others like them, whose lives to her were a constant inspiration.
