Wiggin, Kate Douglas

orig. Kate Douglas Smith

(born Sept. 28, 1856, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Aug. 24, 1923, Harrow, Middlesex, Eng.) U.S. novelist and a leader of the kindergarten movement in the U.S. After moving to San Francisco she headed the Silver Street Kindergarten (1878), the first free kindergarten on the U.S. West Coast, and helped establish the California Kindergarten Training School. To help support the school she began writing novels for both adults and children. She is best remembered for the children's classic Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).

Wiggin, Kate Douglas (Smith) (1856–1953) author, educator; born in Philadelphia, Pa. Raised in Maine, where her widowed mother moved to, she attended various schools in the Northeast before moving to California (1873) with her mother and stepfather. She took a course to be a kindergarten teacher and from 1877 on was active in operation of kindergartens and promoting the kindergarten movement in California. She married in 1881, moved to New York City in 1884, and after her husband's death in 1889 she began to concentrate on writing. Among her numerous books for children, her best known are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903) and Mother Carey's Chickens (1911). She also wrote some books for adults drawing on her many trips to Europe, and with her sister, Nora Smith, she wrote a three-volume book about the kindergarten movement, The Republic of Childhood (1895–96).