Amelia E. Barr (1831 - 1919)

Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (March 29, 1831 - March 10, 1919) was a British novelist. In 1850 she married William Barr, and four years later they migrated to the United States and settled in Galveston, Texas where her husband and three of their six children died of yellow fever in 1867. With her three remaining daughters, Mrs. Barr moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey in 1868. She came there to tutor the three sons of a prominent citizen, William Libby, and opened a school in a small house. This structure still stands at the southwest corner of Van Dien and Linwood Avenues. Amelia Barr did not like Ridgewood and did not remain there for very long. She left shortly after selling a story to a magazine. In 1869, she moved to New York City where she began to write for religious periodicals and to publish a series of semi-historical tales and novels. By 1891, when she achieved greater success, she and her daughters moved up the Hudson River to Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where they renovated a house on the slopes of Storm King Mountain and named it Cherry Croft. The name has been applied to that period of her career, the most productive and successful. She remained there until moving in with her daughter Lilly in White Plains in her last years. She had sunstroke in July of 1918 and never fully recovered. She died on March 10, 1919 in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York.