Good grief! Yet another brilliant 18th-century (well, mostly) woman!
-- "novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress, and
educator" (Wiki)

Childhood immigrant from England, settled in Boston.

Her "Charlotte Temple" (1791) is said to have been the best-selling
American novel before "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

The linguistic connection is mainly in her educational work. "Mrs
Rowson's Academy for Young Ladies" (est. 1797) was the first girls'
school in Boston (?or in the USA - not clear). She later authored
several textbooks, including a speller (A Spelling Dictionary..., 1807),
which used Johnson's dictionary as its source. This (says Crystal)
"distanced her from the bestselling spelling dictionary published by
Noah Webster some years before."
Rowson's dictionary included an appendix: "A Concise Account of the
Heathen Deities, and other Fabulous Persons, with the Heroes and
Heroines of Antiquity". People need to be able to spell proper names, too.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)