Caroline Sturgis Tappan (1818–1888)

Caroline Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, a daughter of William Sturgis, a wealthy merchant, and his wife Elizabeth Marston Davis. Her older sister Ellen Sturgis Hooper also became a poet. She was educated at home. In 1847, she married William Aspinwall Tappan, with whom she had two daughters. She wrote poetry that was published in the the Transcendentalist periodical The Dial. Among her circle were William Ellery Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. She was a close friend of Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her family's summer estate, Tanglewood, was given to the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1936.