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Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Louise McNeill (1911-1993), Poet, Typescript of "Gauley Mountain", A&M 2215, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Biographical / Historical

Louise McNeill was born on 9 January 1911 on the family farm in Buckeye, in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, the daughter of Marietta Grace McNeill (1879-1961) and G.D. (George Douglas) McNeill, both also of Buckeye. Marietta McNeill was a teacher. G.D. McNeill, an author, historian, and teacher, was born on the family farm on 23 May 1877, the son of Confederate captain James M. McNeill and Fanny Perkins McNeill. He joined the U.S. Navy in the early nineteenth century, and served with the Great White Fleet in 1907 on the SS Glacier . G.D. McNeill received an undergraduate degree from Concord College and earned a master's degree from Miami University in Ohio. During his career in education he served as a high school principal; superintendent of Pocahontas County schools; and professor at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. G.D. and Marietta McNeill were married on 29 February 1903 and had four children: Ward K. McNeill, James W. McNeill, Louise McNeill Pease, and Elizabeth McNeill Dorsey.

Louise McNeill grew up on the farm that had been in her family since 1769 and attended the rural school house nearby. She graduated from Marlinton High School in 1927 and taught in the Pocahontas County schools during the 1930s. McNeill began to write poetry as a child, and as a young adult began publishing her work in national journals such as American Mercury , Atlantic Monthly , Christian Science Monitor , Farm Journal , Good Housekeeping , Harper's , Ladies Home Journal , Saturday Evening Post , and Saturday Review of Literature . Her first book of poetry, Mountain White , was published in 1931 in a limited edition of two hundred copies as a prize awarded by poetry magazine Stardust.

McNeill continued to write poetry and to further her education. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Concord College in Athens, West Virginia, in 1936 and then earned a master's degree in creative writing from Miami University in Ohio in 1938. Gauley Mountain (1939) served as her thesis. McNeill worked with Walter Havighurst at Miami and formed a lifelong friendship with both Walter and his wife, Marion. That same year, McNeill won an Atlantic Monthly poetry prize scholarship to the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, Vermont, and she attended the school during the summer of 1938. Her third book of poems, Time Is Our House , was published in 1942 as part of the Bread Loaf Poets Series.

McNeill met her future husband, Roger W. Pease, while in Vermont. They were married in 1939 and had one son, Douglas M. Pease, in 1940. Roger W. Pease (1898-1990) was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, on 2 August 1898, the son of Reverend C.B.F. Pease and Jessica Cole Pease. He attended the Loomis Preparatory School (now The Loomis Chaffee School) in Connecticut and then began studies at Yale University. He left the school to serve in World War I and returned to finish a degree in agriculture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1922.

Louise McNeill Pease and Roger Pease both attended the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop in the late 1930s and then the couple moved to Aiken, South Carolina, where he served as assistant headmaster and she taught at the Aiken Preparatory School from 1941 to 1946. Louise McNeill and Roger Pease returned to West Virginia after World War II and McNeill began her more than twenty-five year career as a professor of English and history. She also earned a Ph.D. from West Virginia University in 1959. McNeill taught at Fairmont College (1947-1948); West Virginia University (1948-1953); Potomac State College (1959-1962); Concord College (1962-1967); and Fairmont State College (1969-1973). She retired in 1973.

McNeill's poems regularly appeared in local and national publications throughout her adult life, but it was not until the early 1970s that she began publishing new collections of poetry. From a Dark Mountain was published in 1972 and was followed by Paradox Hill: From Appalachia to Lunar Shore (1972), Elderberry Flood (1979), and Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems (1991). McNeill's memoirs, Milkweed Ladies , was published in 1988.

McNeill received numerous awards and prizes during her lengthy literary career. These include an Atlantic Monthly poetry scholarship, 1938; the Bread Loaf Publication Award for Time Is Our House ; the West Virginia Library Association Annual Book Award for Paradox Hill ; the Appalachian Gold Medallion award in 1988; and honorary degrees from Fairmont State College and West Virginia University, 1989. McNeill was also inducted into the WVU Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 1989.

Louise McNeill was also honored by her home state of West Virginia. In 1977 she was named West Virginia Daughter of the Year with Governor John D. Rockefeller IV as Son of the Year. This was the beginning of a lasting friendship between the West Virginians. In 1979, Rockefeller wrote the introduction to Elderberry Flood and named McNeill the second poet laureate of the state. McNeill also earned the honor of West Virginian of the Year in 1985. Louise and Roger moved to Connecticut in 1985 to live with their son, Douglas, and his family. Roger Pease died after a long illness on 24 September 1990. Louise returned to West Virginia. She completed a new book, Fermi Buffalo (1994), and was working on a book of essays on American history that she called "Three Shades of Blue" when she passed away. Louise McNeill Pease died in Malden, West Virginia, in June 1993.

Related Material

2215, 3201

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Gauley Mountain
• McNeill, Louise
• Poets and poetry.