Mary Eliza Perine Tucker Lambert
 Poet & Journalist
November 6, 1838 -April 6, 1896

        Mary Eliza Perine Tucker  was born November 6, 1838 in Cahaba, Dallas County Alabama, the daughter of  Edward M. Perine and Mary Eliza Snow. Her father, a native of Staten Island New York, was a merchant and wealthy plantation owner  in Cawhaba, Alabama. Her mother  Mary E. Snow,  a native of  Providence,  Rhode Island, was the daughter of Stephen W. Snow and Syndonia Bowers Snow. Her parents were married in Milledgeville Ga., the state capital,  September 13, 1836 by the Rev. Mr. Mosley.

      Mary's mother died at age 20 died giving birth to her daughter Mary Eliza in Cahaba, Alabama. She lived with her father and grandmother Syndonia Snow there until her father married  Frances E. Hunter in 1846, daughter of Judge John S. Hunter. Their children were Sarah "Sallie" Hunter Perine (1847 - 1864), Addra Perine (1849- 1906 ), and Annie P. Perine (1858).

    After the marriage of her father, Mary moved to Milledgeville, Ga, with her Grandmother Syndonia Bower(s) Snow,   to take some "possesion of property they had come to her at the death of her brother (Daniel Bower (s)."  Mary's  grandfather Stephen W. Snow, of Rhode Island,  had died in Clinton, Jones County, Ga in 1818 at the age of 30.  She and her grandmother lived with her grandmother's brother, Isaac Bower, in Milledgeville. She attended a private academy in Milledgeville run by  Dr. Cotting.   Later her father took her to New York and enrolled her in a private boarding school where she remained 1 year, then to Mrs. Esther Leverett's "polishing school on Eighteenth St."  in New York City.

    It is probable she met John M. Tucker, her future husband, while in Milledgeville as a girl, since they were in the same social class. Tucker was the son of wealthy plantation owner Harper Tucker and Mary Bivins Tucker of Midway, near Millledgeville. Returning home to Alabama after school in New York, Mary and John were married around 1857.

      The couple moved to Midway,  home of her husband, where they  lived with his mother for about a year before getting her own home there  near Oglethorpe University. In 1858 her daughter Annie was born, followed by  Mary H. in 1860. Some of the neighbors were the Talmages, Lanes, Smith's, Myricks and the Cooks.  Sidney Lanier, Georgia Poet, was a student down the street at Talmadge Univeristy.

      After the war devasted the south and her husband and father lost their slave property,  Mary  used her writing skills to make money.  In 1865 her first book, "Confessions of A Flirt, An Ower True Tale" was published by Broughton, Nisbet, Barnes & Moore, Printers in Milledgeville, Ga. under the pseudonym of Mrs. Edward Leigh.

       Leaving her husband and children in Milledgeville she went to New York to find a publisher for her book of poems  and to find a job as a journalist. The stay was financed by her father and with the "blessings of my husband."

       "Lowe's Bridge, A Broadway Idyl". and  "Poems" were published in 1867, by M. Doolady, New York.  "Poems" was dedicated to Governor and Mrs. Jenkins of Milledgville, GA, "honored and trusted friends." Her sister Sallie Hunter Perine, whose Sallie's  picture is next to the  Evanishings poem,  died in 1864, a month after her marriage.

     She contributed regulary to "The Leader, " "Ledger" and other New Yorks papers. She met her 2nd husband Col. Charles H. Lambert, editor of New York Democrat and a very good friend of Mark M. "Brick" Pomeroy. She was a fashion editor for the newspaper Pomeroy's Journal which was published in Illinois.

      In June of 1870 she and her two daughters Annie and Mary Tucker  were living in a hotel/boarding house in New York. Neighbors included Ellen Batty of Atlanta, editress, and George Peck, editor of Daily News who became the governor of Wisconsin.  She and the children were enumerated in the 1870 Federal census in NY  as well as with her husband in Milledgeville. In Milledgeville her grandmother is listed living in the household with her husband.

        She and her husband John M. Tucker divorced and  she married Colonel James W. Lambert,  native New Yorker from Wisconsin, a newspaper editor in late 1870. The children of Mary and James W. Lambert were Georgine Lambert Eckel, Ruby Lambert O'Neill, and James W. Lambert, Jr.  Colonel Lambert was the managing editor of the Philadelphia Times in 1878 and was one of the founders of the Phildelphia Inquirer in 1889. He became Insurance Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1898.

      Mary's grandmother, Sydonia Snow, moved to Philadelphia, lived with the family  and died there in 1880 at the age of 93.
Mary Eliza Tucker Lambert suddenly died at the age of 58  Monday April 6, 1896 in Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pa.. Among the distinguished mourners were Governor and Mrs. Hastings, Attorney-General and Mrs. McCormick. Col. Lambert remarried in 1899 to Mary W. Weston and died June 24, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pa.
 

 Eileen B. McMadams