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 Northwest
poet and writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) was born Ella Rhoads in
Council Grove, Kansas. She moved to Oregon with her parents as an
infant, spending her youth in Portland and Oregon City. She attended
public school in Oregon, and also received private lessons from Oxford
trained S.D. Pope, then one of the most renowned educators on the West
coast.
In 1885, Ella married Russell C. Higginson (1852-1909) in Portland
Oregon. The couple moved to Bellingham, Washington (then the town of
Sehome) in 1888, where they opened a drug store on Elk Street. It was
during this period that Higginson's writing career began to flourish,
with her poetry and short stories published nationally by journals
including McClures, Harper's Monthly, and Colliers. Her best known
work, a poem entitled "Four Leaf Clover," was first published by West
Shore Magazine in 1890. Higginson’s novels and collections of short
stories include Mariella-Of-Out-West, Alaska the Great Country, The
Flower that Grew in the Sand, From the Land of Snow Pearls, and The
Forest Orchid and Other Stories. In June 1931, she was made poet
laureate of Washington State.
Higginson was actively involved in community and civic affairs. She
helped establish Bellingham’s first public reading room and library
(of which she became a long-time board member), and also retained an
active interest in Whatcom County Normal School (later Western
Washington University). Higginson was deeply concerned with issues
affecting women, including female education and the institution of
marriage. In a 1889 article in West Shore, she argued that the "real
evil was not that divorce was too easy, but that marriage was too
easy, and that there should be a law preventing marriage before the
age of thirty, especially if the woman was homeless."* She was an
honorary member of societies including the Progressive Literary and
Fraternal Club, the Bellingham Soroptimists and the Washington State
Federation of Women’s Clubs. Higginson was also the campaign manager
for Mrs Frances C. Axtell, elected as the first female member of
Washington State's House of Representatives in 1912. Higginson died in
Bellingham, Wash. on December 27, 1940.
*Cited in Dorothy Koert, The Lyric Singer: A Biography of Ella
Higginson (Bellingham, Washington: Center for Pacific Northwest
Studies & Fourth Corner Registry), 52.
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