by Edward Payson Roe

Reverend Edward Payson Roe (1838-1888) was an American novelist born in Moodna, Orange County, New York. He studied at Williams College and at Auburn Theological Seminary. In 1862 he became chaplain of the Second New York Cavalry, U.S. V., and in 1864 chaplain of Hampton Hospital in Virginia. In 1866-74 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he moved to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, where he devoted himself to the writing of fiction and to horticulture. During the American Civil War he wrote weekly letters to the New York Evangelist, and subsequently lectured on the war and wrote for periodicals. Amongst his novels are: Barriers Burned Away (1872), What Can She Do? (1873), Opening a Chestnut Burr (1874), Success with Small Fruits (1880), A Day of Fate (1880), Without a Home (1881), His Sombre Rivals (1884), A Young Girl's Wooing (1884), An Original Belle (1885), He Fell in Love with His Wife (1886), Driven Back to Eden (1886) The Earth Trembled (1887), Miss Lou (1888), Nature's Serial Story (1889), Taken Alive, and Other Stories (1892), and The Home Acre.