Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960)

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"Let Me Grow Lovely"
Let me grow lovely, growing old--
So many fine things do:
Laces, and ivory, and gold,
And silks need not be new;
And there is healing in old trees,
Old streets a glamour hold;
Why may not I, as well as these,
Grow lovely, growing old?
~Karle Wilson Baker

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In 1878, Karle (pronounced like "Carl") Wilson Baker was born to William Thomas Murphey and Kate Florence (Montgomery) Wilson in Little Rock, Arkansas. She attended the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Still, the only degree that she received was an honorary doctorate of letters conferred by Southern Methodist University. She moved to Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1901, to join her family, where she went on to teach at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College (1925-1934). Baker had a passion for writing and authored personal and historical essays, novels, nature poetry, and short stories. Under the pen name of Charlotte Wilson, her early works appeared in journals such as Atlantic Monthly, Century, Harper's, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Scribner's, Putnam's, and the Yale Review. [1]

Karle Wilson Baker loved to write about the beauty of East Texas and composed “The Pine Tree Hymn,” that became Stephen F. Austin State University’s first school song. She is the most honored 20th-century poet in Texas, became the first female named a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, and her collection of poetry, Dreamers on Horseback, was nominated for the 1931 Pulitzer Prize. [2]

The Karle Wilson Baker statue is on the lawn of the Sigma Tau Gamma house, her former home (711 N Mound St.), and the dedication was on April 10, 2013. Friends of Historic Nacogdoches, Inc. sponsored the bronze statue sculpted by Brian Keith. [3]

Brian Holt Davis tells a story about the Thomas and Karle Baker and their daughter, Charlotte Baker Montgomery.  

Citations
[1] https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fba36
[2] Sarah Ragland Jackson, Texas Woman of Letters:  Karle Wilson Baker, 2005.
[3] https://fohninc.weebly.com/karle-wilson-baker-statue.html