1810-1889
Elizabeth Kinney was called “one of the cleverest women that ever lived in Newark”. She wrote for The Knickerbocker Magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and Graham’s Magazine. She contributed to the Advertiser where she “took charge of the literary department” , writing “all the book notices & critiques which appeared in it, besides many original articles on various subjects”. She also published a full volume of poetry.
Elizabeth was born Elizabeth Dodge in 1810, in New York. She married Edmund Stedman who died in 1835, and then relocated to her parents home in Plainfield, NJ. She began writing for magazines and began corresponding with William Kinney (son of Hannah Kinney.) editor of the Newark Daily Advertiser in 1841 and they married that same year, after which she was a major contributor to the paper. Elizabeth is shown in Newark on the 1850 census.
From 1850-1864, William had various posts outside the state and they returned to Newark in 1865. While in Italy, she published five articles in a series Mrs. Kinney’s Italian Reminiscences. She published a full volume of poetry in 1867.
Elizabeth died in Summit in 1889, and the Newark News ran a front page obituary.
Bibliography
Portraits of American Women Writers
Census records
Newark In the Public Schools of Newark
Elizabeth Clementine Kinney The Browning’s Correspondence
“Death of Mrs. E. C. Kinney” Newark News Nov 20, 1889
Baker, Mariana Narrative for tableaux; Newark Women of the Century.