 Photo courtesy of the Polk County Historical Association |
Margaret Warner Morley was born on February 17, 1858, in Montrose, Iowa, but her family soon moved to Brooklyn, New York. Margaret was the product of Victorian America, an era defined by a yearning for social evolution. As a result, she took advantage of the dramatically improved educational opportunities for women.
Margaret attended Oswego Normal School, then transferred to New York City Normal College, now Hunter College, where she graduated in 1878. Afterward, she pursued postgraduate studies at both Armour Institute in Chicago, now the Illinois Institute of Technology, and at Woods Hole Marine Laboratories in Massachusetts.
Margaret Morley made a career for herself as a classroom teacher, but she made a lasting name for herself as a writer. She wrote eighteen books on nature topics for children, promoting the understanding and conservation of nature and wildlife. She illustrated many of her own books with detailed drawings that are both scientifically accurate and whimsically engaging. Many of her books were adopted as nature studies textbooks in schools.
Margaret was part of a community of New England authors, artists, and actors who often met for intellectual discussions. In Hartford, Connecticut, Margaret gathered with such notables as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and William Hooker Gillette. There she also met Amelia Watson, the painter and photographer whose watercolor cover art, endpapers, and frontispiece would adorn the original Houghton Mifflin edition of The Carolina Mountains.
In 1890, Margaret and Amelia traveled south to visit William Gillette, who some years earlier had stopped in Tryon, North Carolina, to change trains and was so taken with the place that he built a home there. Tryon at the turn of the century was a thriving place for artists, perhaps especially for creative women. With its mild climate, scenic surroundings, and freedom from the bustle of urban life, Tryon offered an idyllic setting for writing, painting, and other artistic pursuits. Margaret spent considerable time there during the 1890s, traveling widely through the region and taking the notes and photographs that would become The Carolina Mountains.
In 1900, Margaret Morley completed her first book for an adult audience, Down North and Up Along, a travel memoir of a trip to the maritime provinces of Canada. Afterward, she finished The Carolina Mountains and saw it published by Houghton Mifflin in 1913. She continued to travel worldwide, but settled in Tryon, North Carolina. In 1915, she bought a home there with her friend Annie Constance Snow. Their home on Melrose Avenue is no longer standing, but Margaret’s studio still exists.
Margaret and Constance sold their property in Tryon in 1920 during a period of failing health. Constance subsequently died in 1921. Margaret died from complications following emergency abdominal surgery at Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., on December 12, 1923. She was sixty-five years old.
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