Elizabeth Akers Allen

Elizabeth Akers Allen, a journalist from Maine who wrote under the pen name "Florence Percy," published "Rock Me to Sleep" in 1860: "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for to-night!"

The poem became a phenomenon of the Civil War years — set to music again and again, carried in soldiers' packs, recited at firesides on both sides of the conflict. Its longing for a mother's vanished comfort spoke directly to a generation of homesick young men.

It grew so famous that at least five other people claimed to have written it, and Allen spent years publicly defending her own authorship.