BornGladys Leonae Bagg
(1899-04-12)April 12, 1899
Colorado Springs, Colorado
DiedMarch 11, 1980(1980-03-11) (aged 80)
Hyannis, Massachusetts
Resting placeSouthbury, Massachusetts
OccupationAuthor, Professor
Alma materWellesley College BA, Lawrence College MA, Columbia graduate studies
Notable works“Butternut Wisdom” Stillmeadow books
SpouseFrancis (Frank) Albion Taber Jr., 1899-1946 (divorced)
ChildrenConstance
RelativesCotton Mather
Website
www.gladystaber.org


Gladys Bagg Taber (1899–1980) was the American professor and author of over 50 books, 200 short stories, and many magazine articles. Tabor was a columnist for Ladies' Home Journal and Family Circle. She also wrote memoirs, fiction and plays. She is best remembered for her many books about her 1690 Connecticut farmhouse, Stillmeadow, her Still Cove Cape Cod books, and "Butternut Wisdom", a column the appeared for 8 years in Family Circle. Her work appeared in major magazines of the day like Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping.

Early life

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Gladys Leonae Bagg was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado on April 12, 1899 to Rufus Mather Bagg and Grace Sybil (Raybold) Bagg. Her middle name came from an uncle Leonidas Hatch, an officer in the Civil War.[1] Born the middle child, her older sister died at six months, her younger brother at fifteen months.[2] Tabor's father was a mining engineer whose career moved the family around the United States and once into Mexico. Tabor spent summers on her grandfather's farm near West Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1903[3] her father began teaching geology and mineralogy at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin.[4]


Later, she received her bachelor's degree from Wellesley, 1920, and her M.A. from Lawrence College, 1921.

She married Frank Taber and they had a daughter Constance which interrupted her academic career, then having commuted to New York part of the time to teach creative writing at Columbia University, 1921-26.

Stillmeadow years

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a 1690 farmhouse off of Jeremy Swamp Road, Southbury starting in 1933, summers only, and 1935 full time.[5]

The house was jointly owned by the Tabers and their friends Eleanor and Max Mayer.

Her column "Diary of Domesticity" began in the Ladies' Home Journal in November 1937; "Butternut Wisdom" ran in the Family Circle from 1959 to 1967.

Gladys Taber lived in "Stillmeadow," a 1690 farmhouse off Jeremy Swamp Road, Southbury starting in 1933 (summers only) and 1935 (full time).

Gladys Bagg Taber died on March 11, 1980.

Bibliography

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Notes

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References

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  1. ^ Current Biography. H.W. Wilson. 1982. p. 574.
  2. ^ Kelley, James Herbert (1013). The Alumni Record of the University of Illinois. University of Illinois. p. 664.
  3. ^ The American Blue Book of Biography: Men of 1912-. American Publishers. 1914. p. 48.
  4. ^ "Index of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Individuals". Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Boston University. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
  5. ^ "Circle of Writers, Gladys Taber". The Mystical Gardens.