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† Mother Goose is not an imaginary personage. She actually lived in Boston in the 17th Century. Born Elizabeth Foster, she married one Isaac Vergoose (or Goose), a Boston widower "with eight or ten children," becoming Mother Goose to these and "six or more" children of her own. This ménage readily lent itself to the tale of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Mother Goose's son-in-law, one T. Fleet, a printer, wrote down the songs he heard her sing, and in 1719 published a book from his own press entitled Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children. *Catharine Smiley Cheatham, of Manhattan, is an interpretative singer a Christian Scientist.