She was born at Canaan, N. Y., May 1, 1783. Both parents died before she was two years old and the greater part of her childhood was spent in the home of an older sister who was married to a keeper of a county jail. The cruelties and privations suffered by the orphaned child during these years were such that her son in later years declared that it broke his heart to read of them in his mother's diary. She was not permitted to attend school, and could neither read nor write. She was eighteen years old before she escaped from this bondage and found opportunity to attend school for three months. This was the extent of her education within school walls. In 1805, at the age of twenty-two, she married Timothy H. Brown, a house painter. He was a good man, but extremely poor. Moving to Ellington, Mass., they lived in a small, unfinished frame house at the edge of the village. Four little children and a sick sister who occupied the only finished room in the house added to the domestic burdens of Mrs. Brown. In the summer of 1818 a pathetic incident occurred that led to the writing of her most famous hymn. There being no place in her crowded home where she might find opportunity for a few moments of quiet prayer and meditation, she would steal away at twilight to the edge of a neighboring estate, where there was a magnificent home surrounded by a beautiful garden. "As there was seldom any one passing that way after dark," she afterwards wrote, "I felt quite retired and alone with God. I often walked quite up to that beautiful garden ... and felt that I could have the privilege of those few moments of uninterrupted communion with God without encroaching upon any one." But her movements had been watched, and one day the lady of the mansion turned on her in the presence of others and rudely demanded: "Mrs. Brown, why do you come up at evening so near our house, and then go back without coming in? If you want anything, why don't you come in and ask for it?" Mrs. Brown tells how she went home, crushed in spirit. "After my children were all in bed, except my baby," she continues, "I sat down in the kitchen, with my child in my arms, when the grief of my heart burst forth in a flood of tears. I took pen and paper, and gave vent to my oppressed heart in what I called 'My Apology for my Twilight Rambles, addressed to a Lady.'" The "Apology," which was sent to the woman who had so cruelly wounded her began with the lines: Yes, when the toilsome day is gone, And night, with banners gray, Steals silently the glade along In twilight's soft array. Then continued the beautiful verses of her now famous "Twilight Hymn:" I love to steal awhile away From little ones and care, And spend the hours of setting day In gratitude and prayer.