Mary E. (Mary Ellen) Bamford

Born in Healdsburg, California, on December 10, 1857, Mary Ellen Bamford grew up in a pioneer family and was educated in Oakland public schools. Early in her working life, she spent several years as an assistant at the Oakland Free Public Library, an experience that fit naturally with the literary career she would go on to build.

Bamford wrote a wide range of books, including fiction, children's literature, and religious works for Sunday schools and church publishers. Her known titles include My Land and Water Friends, The Look About Club, Up and Down the Brooks, and Her Twenty Heathen. She was also active in Baptist missionary work and the prohibition movement.

She is remembered not only as a prolific California author, but also for her interest in the history of immigration on the West Coast. Accounts of her life note that, unlike many Americans of her era, she showed sympathy toward Chinese and other Asian immigrants. Bamford died on May 21, 1946, at age 88.