Alberta Powell Graham

Born in Harrington, Delaware, Alberta Powell Graham spent much of her early life in Ottumwa, Iowa. She trained at the American Conservatory in Chicago and also studied at Columbia, Northwestern, and Cornell, building a career that combined music, education, and writing.

Before focusing heavily on books, she worked in music education and became known as a composer, with more than two hundred children’s songs published. Her papers at the University of Iowa describe a body of work that included songs, stories, poems, articles, and plays, showing how wide-ranging her creative life was.

From 1939 onward she lived in Washington, D.C., where she carried out historical research at the Library of Congress and wrote books such as Christopher Columbus: Discoverer, Clara Barton, Red Cross Pioneer, Lafayette, Friend of America, Great Bands of America, and Washington: The Story of Our Capital. She also served as president of the Washington Children's Book Guild, a fitting role for an author devoted to making history and culture accessible to younger readers.