Memoir of the late Mr. William Bassett, of Countesthorpe
Printed by Winds and Son 1 Jan 1862

* * * * *

Section 5 - Featured Bassett: Sara Ware Bassett, Author

Sara Ware Bassett is descended from William of Plymouth (#1A) as follows:

William Bassett and wife Elizabeth
Nathaniel Bassett (b. 1628) and wife Dorcas Joyce
Joseph Bassett (b. 1669) and wife Susannah Howes
Joshua Bassett (b. 1712) and wife Hannah Bramhall
Joseph Bassett (b. 1747) and wife Mary Pettee
John Ross Bassett (b. 1778) and wife Mary Turner
Caleb Turner Bassett (b. 1815) and wife Sarah Thompson Allen
Charles Warren Bassett (b. 1843) and wife Anna Augusta Haley
Sara Ware Bassett

        Current Biography, 1956
        Sarah Ware Bassett, Author

        On April 15, 1955 the Boston Authors' Club honored Sara Ware Bassett, one of its most loyal and active members, on the publication of her fiftieth book. For more than forty years Miss Bassett has written her pleasant novels of New England life. At eighty-four she is busily at work on a new novel scheduled for publication in 1957. A small and fragile-looking lady who has lived all her life in Massachusetts, Miss Bassett shuns publicity. "I prefer to be represented by my work," she writes, "I love my writing. It is my boon companion."
        A descendant of William Bassett who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on the Fortune in 1621 and joined the Pilgrims' colony, Sara Ware Bassett was born in Newton, Massachusetts, October 22, 1872, to Charles Warren and Anna Augusta (Haley) Bassett. She spent her childhood and early girlhood in Newton, studying in the Newton public schools and graduating from the Newton High School in 1892. In the same year she entered the Lowell School of Design, then a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where she completed a program in textile design. She never worked professionally in the field, however. In 1894 she decided to become a kindergarten teacher, and after five years of study at the Symonds Kindergarten Training School in Boston, she obtained a position in the Newton public schools which she held from 1897 to 1917.
        With a teaching schedule of a little more than two hours a day, Miss Bassett had time to continue her studies in the three fields which interested her most - English, psychology, and philosophy. She took courses at Radcliffe College in Cambridge under such distinguished professors as Charles T. Copeland ("Copey"), Josiah Royce, and George Herbert Palmer. She also studied at Boston University under Dallas Lore Sharp. Miss Bassett had by this time resolved to become a writer, but, as she explains, "I was ill satisfied with my work and was determined to learn how to 'handle my tools'."
        Encouraged by all her teachers, but especially by Professor Charp, she began her first novel, and this was published in 1915 by George H. Doran under the The Taming of Zenas Henry (made into a silent motion picture by RKO). In the forty years since this time, Miss Bassett has published thirty novels, her latest To Each His Dream in 1955 (Doubleday). She has also written a number of books for children: a group in the Industrial Book series for the Penn Publishing Company from 1912 to 1920 (The Story of Lumber, The Story of Wool, The Story of Glass, etc.); another group for the Invention Series published by Little, Brown from 1920 to 1926 (Paul and the Printing Press, Steve and the Steam Engine, etc.); and again for Penn in 1926 to 1927 two volumes in the Discovery Series, The Story of Columbus, The Story of Vasco da Gama. With George L. Shuman she wrote Industries of the World (1914) and with E.T. Holmes A Wonderful Fifty Years (1917, privately printed).
        Most of Miss Bassett's novels are set on Cape Cod, Massachusetts where (except for two trips to England and the Continent) she has spent all her summers since she was in her teens. "I have sought to put into my novels its atmosphere, the fragrance of its pines, the blueness of its sea, the emerald of its salt marshes. I have also tried to present sincerely the humor of the Cape Codder, his common sense, his sterling qualities."
        Reviewers have generally agreed that Miss Bassett has succeeded in this intention. Her novels, Lisle Bell remarked in the New York Herald Tribune in 1943, are "wholesome and folksy, touched with native humor and the spirit of neighborliness." In a review of her novel Heart's Haven (Doubleday, 1944), the New York Times (July 9, 1944) commented: "Widely known for the flavor of authenticity she brings to her stories  by right of heritage, the author is at her best when describing the natives of the small village of Belleport and letting you listen in on their gossip and salty philosophizing."
        It is not Miss Bassett's purpose to portray the grimmer aspects of the modern world nor to explore in depth the complexities of human life. On the eve of World War II, the Saturday Review of Literature (July 1, 1939) complained that her novel A Son of the Sea (Doubleday, 1939) with "its absence of contemporary insecurity, tenseness, and quickness, belongs in those great days of the Atlantic Monthly which preceded the Civil War. It was designed for that saintly white-haired grandmother who in advertisements is all day sitting and knitting and dreaming; it is tender, conventional, and unreal as she is." To the large public that seeks escape in pleasant romantic fiction, however, Miss Bassett's novels, soundly based as they are in the spirit and flavor of rural and smalltown New England life, remain sturdy favorites.
        Miss Bassett does all her writing at the Boston Athenaeum (of which she is a proprietor) where she is free from the interruptions of telephone calls and visitors. She lives with her sister, a retired physician, in an old house on Beacon Hill in Boston. Her favorite recreations are "a good book, a good play, good music." She rarely listens to the radio and has never watched television. She is proud of her strong family tradition ("although we have traveled, our family have never lived outside Massachusetts since 1621") and states her convictions simply but firmly: "I stand for what is clean, decent, and upholds our religious and moral standards."

* * * * *

Section 6 - New family lines combined or added since the last newsletter

        The following family lines have been combined/eliminated since the last newsletter.