The poem was published by educator and writer Sarah Josepha Hale as part of a collection of children's verses in 1830. She had been encouraged to produce this volume by Lowell Mason, the composer and music educator who is considered the founder of school music education in the United States. He was specifically in search of material he could set to music for instruction, and he included "Mary's Lamb" in his Juvenile Lyre, Or, Hymns and Songs, Religious, Moral, and Cheerful, Set to Appropriate Music, For the Use of Primary and Common Schools. This songbook was used in Boston public schools and was probably the first such collection in the United States. Hale's verse is reportedly based on the true story of Mary Sawyer, who took her lamb to school in the vicinity of Sterling Massachusetts, which, subsequent to the song's success, has erected a statue in her honor.
|"Mary's Lamb," with music by Lowell Mason from the Juvenile Lyre, 1831,|
Boston Literary History
Pound, Gomer. "Mason's Hand in "Mary's Lamb"." The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education 7, no. 1 (1986): 23-27. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/stable/40214696.
Richards Free Library