Born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1826, Martha Nash attended schools in Goshen, Easthampton, and Northampton, Massachusetts. She taught school for a few years in New Jersey and Ohio, and in September 1852 she married Charles A. Lamb, with whom she moved in 1857 to Chicago. There she was associated with Jane Hoge in the founding of the Home for the Friendless and the Half-Orphan Society and with Hoge and Mary A. Livermore in the Chicago Sanitary Fair in 1863. In 1866, probably having divorced her husband, she moved to New York City.
Turning to literary work to support herself, she produced eight volumes of children╒s stories in 1869 and 1870, Spicy, a novel, in 1873, and a number of articles and stories published in periodicals. In 1877 and 1881 appeared the two volumes of her History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress, which far surpassed Mary L. Booth╒s pioneering history of 1859 in its extensive and imaginative use of documentary sources. Other books of hers included The Homes of America, 1879, several Christmas annuals such as The Christmas Owl and The Christmas Basket, and Historical Sketch of New York for the Tenth Census, 1883.
In May 1883 Lamb bought the six-year-old and financially shaky Magazine of American History, of which she was editor for the rest of her life. Under her guidance the journal became an important and successful one. She published historical documents, reviews, and scholarly articles, and herself contributed more than 50 signed articles and uncounted unsigned ones. From her own contributions to the magazine developed such books as Wall Street in History, 1883, and Unpublished Washington Portraits, 1888.
She was a member of more than a score of historical and patriotic societies and was widely honored for her work; she was twice invited to the White House, in 1886 by President Grover Cleveland and in 1889 by President Benjamin Harrison. She died in New York City on January 2, 1893. The Magazine of American History was sold by her heirs and ceased publication eight months later.
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