How Did Life Influence Rachel Carson's Life

Most people would agree that Rachel Carson’s mother was a huge influence in her life but, investigation of her father Robert’s life indicates the positive impact that he had on his daughter as well. When her parents were first married, they lived with her mother’s mother as they had very little money. Robert was self-employed as a traveling insurance salesman with the Mercantile Company, a subsidiary of the Great American Insurance Company. He was not a farmer and had little interest in developing a farm. He subdivided the downhill sections of his property into large level lots and in 1910 began advertising them for sale for $300 each. Through his unsuccessful career choices and his willingness to continue trying different occupations
Maria Carson was remembered for being quite musically gifted, playing piano, singing, and composing. After her graduation in 1887, Maria McLean taught school and piano in Washington County. After being married, she was required to cease her teaching career, as married women were not permitted to teach school in those days. She energetically directed her children's social activities as well as their education, apparently with her husband's approval. At the time the Comstock books had become extremely popular and were being sent home from school with Marian and Robert, Rachel’s two older siblings. These books taught about loving and respecting nature. Maria Carson would teach her children from these books and she had a 64-acre classroom to use. It was Maria Carson who first instilled a love of nature and respect for the natural world in Rachel and began teaching her botany. From the age of one when the two older children were in school, Maria would take Rachel on walks and instruct her on the names of the flowers, birds, and insects. Because there was such an age difference between her siblings and herself when Marian and Robert had begun spending their days in school, Rachel and her mother wandered the 64-acre homestead learning about the
Rachel was the youngest of the three. Her sister was 10 years her elder and her brother Robert and her were 7 years apart. Both her siblings left school after the tenth grade. Her sister became a stenographer. Marian, a remarkably beautiful girl, fell in love with a New Kensington student at the age of 18 and was married and divorced by the age of twenty. Rachel saw the impact that this had on her sister and the unhappiness that it caused her and that a woman could not have a life and a marriage and be financial independent. Five years later, Marian remarried again and had two children, which Rachel raise from the ages of eleven and twelve. Robert left high school after the tenth grade as well and enlisted in the Army shortly thereafter. His unit was sent to France in 1918. He returned to Springdale a year later and took a position as an electrician at West Penn Power. Although being quite popular he never settled down and married why in Springdale. He had a reputation of being quite arrogant. His time in the service provided Rachel material for her to develop literature as a young girl. The first piece she published was based on a letter that Robert had written from Paris, where he was