Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

Born in Brooklyn in 1870, Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris studied at Packer Collegiate Institute and earned her A.B. from Vassar College in 1892. Sources also describe her as one of the first women to earn a PhD at Yale University, and she later taught English at both Packer and Vassar.

In 1899 she married Charles Gould Morris and moved to Newtown, Connecticut, to the family property known as the Old Morris Place. While raising five children, she continued to write and publish, building a reputation as an essayist, memoirist, and literary scholar.

Her books include The Drama; Its Laws and Its Technique, The Jonathan Papers, and Isaiah Incorporated. She is especially remembered for writing that turns rural life and ordinary experience into something lively, thoughtful, and companionable.