Shindler, Mary Dana (15 February 1810–08 February 1883), songwriter and advocate of reform, was born Mary Stanley Bunce Palmer in Beaufort, South Carolina, the daughter of Benjamin Morgan Palmer and Mary Stanley Bunce. In 1814 her father, a Princeton graduate, became co-pastor of Charleston’s Independent (Congregational) Church. Mary attended a prestigious school for girls in Charleston and received a lady’s education at seminaries conducted by clergymen in Connecticut and New Jersey. Some of her juvenile poems were published in a periodical that was edited locally. Through family connections she met many of antebellum America’s leading clergymen, foreign and domestic missionaries, and women involved in church work and charities....
