Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger) Blackford

Born Katherine Melvina Huntsinger in Kansas in 1875, she became known as Katherine M. H. Blackford and built a reputation as an American writer on personnel management and character analysis. Sources on her life identify her as an early writer in what would later be called human resources, and her books reached a wide audience in the early twentieth century.

She is best known for works such as Analyzing Character, written with Arthur Newcomb, and Blondes and Brunets. Her writing tried to explain how employers could place people in the right jobs and understand temperament and ability, reflecting the period's strong interest in efficiency, self-improvement, and classification.

The dates attached to some book records can be confusing: library and archive listings for specific editions sometimes show "1875–1916," but broader biographical sources indicate she was born on March 18, 1875, and died on September 11, 1958. A portrait on her Wikipedia page survives from a later period of her life.