Josephine Clifford McCrackin

Josephine Clifford McCracken (or McCrackin) (1839–1921) was a California writer and journalist (a contemporary of Bret Harte, John Muir, Ina Coolbrith, and Joaquin Miller), as well as an environmentalist. She was a member of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.

Early life

Josephine Woempner was born in Petershagen, Kingdom of Prussia, during a time of much civil unrest. Her father, a former soldier at Waterloo, foresaw trouble from citizenry calling for revolution, and so gathered his family in 1846 and emigrated to St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States.

In 1864, Josephine met and married Army Lieutenant James A. Clifford in New Mexico. Clifford's sanity began to unravel and he confessed to his wife that he had killed a man in Texas. He threatened her, saying that if she told anyone, he would kill her too. After appealing to his superiors and making sure he was under guard, she fled to her family in San Francisco.

In California

McCracken wrote articles for Harper Brothers and for the newspapers Out West and Western Field while traveling through New Mexico and lower California, and once in San Francisco, turned full-time to her love for writing and literary pursuits. She joined the staff of the Overland Monthly as secretary in 1867. She befriended poet Ina Coolbrith, who she called one of the Golden Gate Trinity along with the other two pillars of the Overland Monthly, Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard. Coolbrith called her "Jo". Her first piece for the journal, "Down Among the Dead Leaves", was published in 1869. In 1871 a collection of her short stories was published as a book entitled Overland Tales. She eventually became a respected figure in the San Francisco literary community. In 1880, she bought 26 acres (110,000 m2) of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains and built a home in the community of Summit, California.