Amanda Ruter Dufour (, Ruter; February 26, 1822 – May 29, 1899) was a 19th-century American poet. Many of her productions were devotional in nature, and included piety and charity, these being traits she probably inherited from her father. Many of her fugitive pieces were published by the Louisville Journal, the Odd Fellows' Ark, at Columbus, Ohio, and other periodicals. She died in 1899. Early life and education Amanda Louise Ruter was born in Jeffersonville, Indiana, February 26, 1822. She was the oldest daughter of Rev. Calvin Washington Ruter, one of the pioneers of Methodism in Indiana. With his brother, the Rev. Dr. Martin Ruter, the two men were among the most highly educated and eminent ministers of the Methodist Church, who, at an early day, brought the foundations of that religion to the valley of the Mississippi River. Her mother was Harriet De Haas Ruter. The father was of Vermont and Puritans ancestry, and the mother was of Virginia and Huguenots ancestry. One of her siblings was the writer, Rebecca Ruter Springer. The years of her earliest childhood were spent on a farm near Lexington, Indiana. Ruter enjoyed spending time by herself in a rustic bower constructed in a woodland pasture adjacent to her home. There, rhymes came to her even before she could read. When she was eight years of age, the family removed to New Albany, Indiana where her youth was passed. Conflicting circumstances influenced her character. On the one hand her father, a man of melancholy temperament and studious habits, required absolute quiet in his household; and this gave the child many hours for lonely reflection and for the study of books. She began to commit her own thoughts to paper, and these usually assumed a poetical form. She possessed herself of some elementary Latin works from her father's library, and sought to teach herself that language. But her mother's health failing, so that many of the domestic duties devolved on her child, she was forced to stay away from books and writing materials, lest the household chores should be neglected. After Dufour was sent to school, her health declined. She persevered, however, until she had acquired all that her teachers could communicate, and had herself mastered the usual qualifications of a teacher. As her father's parishioners were poor and his financial means were limited, she subsequently assisted by keeping school at Rising Sun, Indiana, in