Ella Higginson

Ella Rhoads Higginson (c. January 28, 1862 – December 27, 1940) was an American author of award-winning fiction, poetry, and essays characteristically set in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. She was the author of 2 collections of short stories, 6 books of poetry, a novel, a travel book, well over 100 short stories, over 400 poems, and hundreds of newspaper essays. She was influential for the ways her writing drew international attention to the then little-known Pacific Northwest region of the United States. She served as an officer of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.

Life

Ella Rhoads was born in Council Grove, Kansas, to Charles Reeve Rhoads and Mary A. Rhoads. She was the youngest of six children. In 1863, the family traveled by wagon train from Kansas to Oregon and first settled in Eastern Oregon's Grande Ronde Valley. They later moved to Portland, then to a farm near Milwaukie, then to Oregon City.

Ella was privately tutored and also attended public school. At age 23, she married Russell Carden Higginson, age 33, a druggist from the Northeastern United States. He was a distant cousin of New England writer and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. In 1888, Ella and Russell Higginson moved to New Whatcom (later Bellingham), Washington where they would live out their lives. Higginson traveled to Alaska for four summers as part of the research for her travel book. In 1892, the Higginson house, known as Clover Hill, in Bellingham was built. On May 14, 1909, Russell Higginson, age 57, died after a short illness.