Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell (1849–1883)

Katherine Bonner was born to an Irish immigrant and his wife, the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, in antebellum Mississippi. She began writing at an early age and published stories in small periodicals before age 15. Her privileged childhood came to an end with the Civil War and the occupation of her family home by Union soldiers. In 1871, at she married Edward McDowell and moved with him to Texas, where they had a daughter. The couple struggled financially and two years later, Mrs. McDowell took matters into her own hands, travelling to Boston to seek her fortune as a writer. She worked as a secretary for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would become her mentor and lifelong friend.

Over 10 years, she became a successful freelance writer under several pen names before settling on "Sherwood Bonner." She published in a number of genres and styles, including humorous travel letters, romance novels, and satiric poems. She wrote a series of tales in Southern dialect featuring "Gran’mammy," based on a figure from her youth, which appeared in Northern publications from 1875 to 1880. Her most famous work was her semi-autobiographical novel Like Unto Like (1878) set in the South during Reconstruction. Shortly after a divorce from her husband, she became ill and returned to her childhood home in Mississippi, where she died at age 34. She's now considered a pioneering female writer of her era.