SOURCE: “The Genesis of Spoon River,” in American Mercury, Vol. 28, No. 109, January, 1933.

In the following essay, Masters explains autobiographical and other sources of Spoon River.

I must commence these incunabula of the Spoon River Anthology with some biographical references, since my blood and stock had something to do with the book; while the story of my ancestors is here and there woven into its fabric.

It is a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon production. My mother's people were Putnams, Humphreys and Dexters of New England, who came there anciently from England. My father's ancestors immigrated to Virginia, Knotley Masters having been the founder of the family. He came from England or Wales in the early Eighteenth Century. His son Hilary was born in what is now Wythe county, and went to the Revolutionary War from that county. His son Thomas was also born in Wythe, but crossed over into Overton county...