Ethel Lynn Beers

Who was Ethel Lynn Beers?

Ethelinda Lynn Beers was an American poet best known for her patriotic and sentimental Civil War poem "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight".

Born Ethelinda Eliot in Goshen, New York, she was a descendant of Puritan missionary John Eliot. She published poetry as "Ethyl Lynn" and after her marriage at age 19 to William H. Beers appended her married name to her poems. Her most famous poem, "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight", first appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 30, 1861 under the title The Picket Guard. Her poems, including other notable works like "Weighing the Baby", "Which Shall It Be?", and "Baby Looking Out For Me", appeared in many publications, most frequently the New York Ledger. In 1863 she published General Frankie: a Story for Little Folks. She feared publishing her collected works as she thought she would die after its publication, a premonition which came true. The day after the publication of All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems she died in Orange, New Jersey.