This is a transcription of the Mrs. Augusta (Harvey) Worthen of Lynn, Massachusetts biography from New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life, The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895, page 45.
Augusta (Harvey) Worthen
MRS. AUGUSTA (HARVEY) WORTHEN, of Lynn, Mass., is a representative of one of the most noted New Hampshire families. She was born in Sutton, September 27, 1823; daughter of Col. John and Sally (Greeley) Harvey. Her father was a younger brother of Hon. Jonathan Harvey, and Hon. Matthew Harvey, both of whom served the public in Congress, and the latter as governor of the state, and for thirty-five years was United States judge for the District of New Hampshire. In the family of this uncle Mrs. Worthen spent several years of her later childhood, enjoying the advantage of tuition in Hopkinton Academy. Later she became a student in Andover Academy, and a catalogue of that institution for 1851 shows her name among the teachers. February 15, 1855, she married, in Danvers, Mass., Charles F. Worthen of Candia, N. H., and in 1858 removed with him to Lynn. where Mr. Worthen was for several years engaged in shoe manufacturing, and where he died February 15, 1882. Lynn is still Mrs. Worthen’s home, where she is engaged, more or less, in literary work. She is sister to the late Matthew Harvey, of Newport, who, for a long term of years, was, in connection with his partner, Henry G. Carlton, co-editor of the New Hampshire Argus and Spectator. It was mainly through the aid of this partial brother that her literary efforts were first brought before the public. She is represented by poems of especial merit in “New Hampshire Poets,” in “Poets of America,” “Poets of Essex County,” and several later collections, and also by a portrait and biography in “A Woman of the Century.” But the great labor of her life has been the preparation of a history of her native town of Sutton, a work of over eleven hundred pages, published in 1890-’91, on which she had been engaged, more or less diligently, for twenty years. It is the first town history in the state prepared by a woman, and has been much and worthily commended for thoroughness and literary finish.