Cora Miranda Baggerly Older (1875 – September 26, 1968) was an American writer and historian known for her California-based writing and activism. She often collaborated on social issues with her husband, Fremont Older, and she is now best remembered as a writer and historian of Californian events and people.
Early life
Cora Miranda Baggerly was born in Clyde New York in 1875. She had a brother, Hilland Baggerly, who later worked in journalism as well.[1] She attended Syracuse University.
Writing career
Older's work covered a variety of mediums including novels, reviews, and magazine articles, often tackling social issues; she also wrote biographies of William Randolph Hearst and his father.[2] She published her last book in 1961, seven years before her death.[3] At one point, another writer described Older as "a woman whose womanly attributes commend a nobility of California's authors."[4] She wrote under her married title as "Mrs. Fremont Older."[2]
Personal life
In 1893, she met newspaper editor Fremont Older while on summer vacation from Syracuse. She and her classmates had performed in a play in Sacramento, which Fremont Older happened to have attended. They quickly became engaged and married a month later on August 22.[5][6] In 1912, the couple purchased some land and then two years built later Woodhills,[7] a house of hybrid architectural features that Cora Older mostly directed.[8] The property today is now a regional park known as the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve, and it has a "Cora Older Trail" available to the public.[9] Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, she was associated with fellow activist and writer Stella Wynne Herron.[10][11]
^Mills, W. H. (1922). Lyons, Louis S.; Wilson, Josephine (eds.). "Noble Women Who Inspire". Who's Who Among the Women of California: 126 – via Google Books.
.jpg)
