Izola L. Forrester (1878–1944)

Izola L. Forrester was born in Pascoag, Rhode Island. Her writings as an adult often drew on her childhood in the 1880s as a performer along with her mother Ogarita Booth Henderson, a stage actress.

Izola's biological father was George Wallingford Hills, a Harvard College student who was not married to her mother. She was raised partly by her stepfather, Alexander Henderson, a director of musicals and light operas, but for periods of her childhood, she lived with her maternal grandmother, Izola Martha Mills, her cousin Hanson Pike Gilman, and with journalist George Forrester and his wife Harriet. Following her mother's death in 1892, Izola went to live permanently with the Forresters, who formally adopted her the following year. In 1899, she married Ruben Robert Merrifield, a banner artist with whom she would have five children, and lived in Chicago and then New York City. She got a job as a feature writer for the New York World, specializing in women's interest stories about public figures such as leaders of the suffrage movement and stage and film stars. She became a pioneering journalist in the heyday of magazine and newspaper publishing in the early part of the 20th century and was a prolific contributor to national periodicals such as The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, and McClure's. She also wrote some 20 books, mostly for young girls, including the popular Greenacre Girls and Polly Page series. Izola took on an additional role as a movie screenwriter with her second husband, Mann Page, Jr., an author, screenwriter, and playwright with whom she had three more children, The couple wrote 36 films together from the silent era to the talkies. Izola's last book was This One Mad Act: The Unknown Story of John Wilkes Booth and His Family by His Granddaughter (1937), a memoir of her mother's claim to be the daughter of John Wilkes Booth.