Mary Ashley Townsend (1832–1901)

Mary Ashley Townsend, née Van Voorhis, was born in Lyons, New York. She published her first poem at age 17 and was writing a news column called "An Hour out of the City" for the New Odeans Daily Delta by the following year. In 1852, she married her cousin Gideon Townsend, with whom she had three daughters.

They lived in Fishkill, New York, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Under the pen name Xariffa, she became known as the author of Quillotypes, a series of humorous sketches that appeared in the New Orleans Delta and were widely copied by the southern and western press. Her other published works were the novel The Brother Clerks (1859), Poems (1870), The Captain's Story (1874), and Down the Bayou, and other Poems (1884). She was active in literary salons and was honored by the Mexican government for her writings.