Mary Grace Halpine was an American writer of love stories. Not much information has been obtained about her. That she was real and that Halpine was not a pseudonym seems to be established by the facts that in the Correspondents' Column of the Fireside Companion, March 27, 1871, she says she is "Miss," not "Mrs." Mary Grace Halpine; and that when Tousey failed in 1885, among his liabilities were $280 to Mary Grace Halpine, $60 to J. M. Merrill, and $1,005.50 to John R. Musick.

Miss Halpine's activity extended over many years. She was writing poems for Gleason's Flag of Our Union as early as 1852, poems and short stories for T. S. Arthur's Home in 1853, for Godey's in 1854, New York Ledger in 1863, Peterson's and the Saturday Journal in 1870, and so on. In the late 1870's and early 1880's she was writing for Leslie's Monthly, and in the Arm Chair for November 19, 1881, is the statement that "Mrs. [sic] Halpine writes exclusively for the Arm Chair."

† She died in June, 1892.

† Miss Halpine was born in New York State, the daughter of the Reverend E. E. Halpine, a Baptist minister, and his wife, ——— Terry, a descendant of Stephen Terry, one of the founders of Terryville, Connecticut. Her father was pastor in Greenfield, Vermont, and died when Mary was fourteen. She had been writing poems and stories as early as 1852, and after his death took up literary work seriously. She became editor of Happy Home and Mother's Assistant and later moved to Brooklyn, about twenty years before her death.

Besides the books mentioned above, she also wrote a religious novel, "Ernest Richmond," which is said to have sold over 100,000 copies, a very large number for those days.

REFERENCES: American Stationer, April 16, 1885; Warford, "Dates of Events," a memorandum book compiled by Warford, the "Questions and Answers" editor of Tousey's story papers, and now in the possession of Ralph Adimari.

Saturday Journal. Nos. 403, 432
Fireside Library. No. 60
Waverley Library (quarto). Nos. 19, 170
Waverley Library (octavo). No. 10

† Correction made as per Volume 3.