Woman of the Century/Eva Katherine Clapp Gibson

GIBSON, Mrs. Eva Katherine Clapp, author, born in Bradford, Ill., 10th August, 1857. EVA KATHERINE CLAPP GIBSON. Her father removed from western Massachusetts and pre-empted a section of the best farming laud in the State. There he built a log house of the frontier type, and in this his children were born. Miss Clapp's paternal grandmother was Lucy Lee, who was a direct descendant, on her father's side, from the famous Indian princess, Pocahontas. Her mother was Ann Ely, from Litchfield, Conn., a direct descendant from Lady Alice Fenwick, a romantic figure in Colonial times, of Old Lyme, Conn. Miss Clapp pissed the first eleven years of her life under her mother's watchful care, on her father's farm. After her mother's death she lived with a married sister. She attended school in Amboy, in the Dover Academy, and subsequently in the Milwaukee Female College. While her studies were pursued in a desultory manner and at irregular intervals, she learned very rapidly and easily. When about sixteen years old, she visited for a time in the large eastern cities, and subsequently taught school in western Massachusetts. She commenced to write at an early age Her first story, written when she was twenty years old, was a novel, entitled "Her Bright Future," drawn largely from life. Some thirty-thousand copies were sold. That was followed by "A Lucky Mishap" and "Mismated," which reached a sale of about ten-thousand copies. "A Woman's Triumph." and a serial first published in one of the Chicago dailies as "Tragedies of Prairie Life," and subsequently published in book form as "A Dark Secret." She has written many short stories and sketches, and has done Considerable editorial work. Her poems have had a wide circulation. They are to be published in book form, umler the title. "Songs of Red Rose Land." She liecame the wife of Dr. C. B. Gibson, of Chicago, in 1S92, and spent a year in Europe, where Mrs. Gibson made a special study of the literature of Germain and France.