"Effie-Waller-Smith" (January 6,1879-January 2,1960)

From a farm  in Chloe Creek,Kentucky a few miles away from Pikeville,she

was Effie was born the third of four children to Frank Waller & Sibbie Ratiff,both former slaves.The Waller household was one in which God was heavily praised and education highly prized.After completing the eight grade at a local school,like her older siblings Alfred and Rosa,Effie attended Kentucky Normal School for Colored Persons in Frankfort,where between 1900 and 1902 she trained to be a teacher.Little is known about her teaching career except that she taught school off and on for more than a dozen years,sometimes,in Kentucky and sometimes in Tennessee.

Of Effie's writing life,we know a little bit more.Several of her poems had been published in local papers by 1902 so that in 1904,her club of admirers and well-wishers celebrated by a vanity press in New York City.The 110 poems in this collection touched a range of subjects,including nature,romantic love,patriotism,and not least of all,the months.The same year that songs of the Months came out,Efflie married a man name Lyss Cockrell who quit the marriage when it was very young,and whom Effie divorced soon after he made his exit.In 1908,she tried marriage again with former classmate,Charles Smith.This marriage,which produced one child who died in infancy was also brief with Effie filing for divorce before the year was out.

During all the personal trials,Effie kept at her writing,even getting three short stories published in Putman's.In 1909,two more volumes of her verse appeared.The first was Rhymes from the Cumberland Mountains area and musing on relgion and romance.In the second volume,Rosemary and Pansies,"many of the poems are somber and subdued yet definite and conclusive as they examine issues and situation in life.There is a mood maintained throughout that sometimes delves into the mystical." These are the words of David Deskins,who has assiduously searched for information and provided insights into the life and mind of this rather unknown bard.

In 1917,Effie appeared in print for the last time: the publication was the prestigious magazine Harper's  and the work was a sonnet, "Autumn Winds." After this,Effie disappeared,though she lived another forty years,the bulk of which she spent in Wisconsin where she relocated in the mid-1920s and where she raised Ruth,the daughter of a deceased friend whom she adopted in the late 1920s.