A local-color writer who later turned to romantic fiction, Mary Hartwell Catherwood is now remembered for the part her early stories played in the history of midwestern short fiction.

The daughter of Marcus and Phoebe Thompson Hartwell, Mary Hartwell was born in Luray, Ohio, about thirty miles east of Columbus. When she was nine, her family migrated to Milford, Illinois, and within two years the three Hartwell children were orphaned and returned to Hebron, Ohio, to be raised by their maternal grandparents. Mary Hartwell began teaching at the age of fourteen to earn money for college, and at eighteen she entered Granville Female College. In 1868 she finished a four-year course after only three years. She returned to teaching in Ohio and Illinois briefly, but when her poems and sketches began to be accepted regularly for publication, she became a free-lance writer, moving first to Newburgh, New York, in...