Woman of the Century/Charlotte Louise Smith

SMITH, Mrs. Charlotte Louise, poet and author, born in Unity, Me., 20th September, 1853. She is the daughter of James Bowdoin Murch and Mary Lucretia Murch. On her mother's side she is descended from the Prescotts of Revolutionary fame, a family which has given the world a brave general and patriot, a great historian, and many valued workers in the field of literature. Her father was a lawyer and a man of scholarly tastes, who placed a volume of Shakespeare in his daughter's hands at an age when most children are reading nursery tales, and who encouraged her attempts at verse-making. Early in her youth her family removed from Unity to Belfast, the county seat of Waldo county, Me., where her girlhood was passed, and her first literary efforts were made. Before she was fifteen years of age two of her poems were published in the Boston "Traveller." and since that time she has been a contributor to the more important newspapers of Maine and to many journals in other parts of the United States Her literary work has been chiefly in CHARLOTTE LOUISE SMITH. the line of journalistic correspondence, descriptions of natural scenery, translations from foreign literature, and the composition of poetry. To the stanzas of the great French poets she has given such careful study and patient effort as to make her successful in reproducing their subtle shades of meaning and the music of their intricate rhythm. In 1879 she became the wife of Bertram Lewis Smith, of Bangor, Me., a lawyer. After her marriage she lived in Bangor till 1889, when business interests took her husband to Patten, Me., which has since been her home.