Will Allen Dromgoole was an American poet, writer, and journalist. She wrote fiction stories about the Negroes and mountaineers of Tennessee and also wrote for children.
Background
William Dromgoole was born on October 25, 1860, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She was the daughter of John Easter Dromgoole, born in Brunswick County, Virginia, of English and Irish ancestry, and of Rebecca Mildred Blanch of Mecklenburg, Virginia, whose ancestors were French and Danish.
Education
Dromgoole was educated in private schools in Murfreesboro, in the Clarksville, Tennessee, Female Academy, from which she was graduated in 1876, and at the Boston School of Expression.
Career
Encouraged by her father, Dromgoole first began to write at "The Yellowhammer's Nest, " a rustic cabin near Estill Springs in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, where her family spent the summer. Later she shortened her first name to Will. Her first story, "Columbus Tucker's Discontent, " won the second prize of $250 offered by the Youth's Companion in 1886. The same year she published her first book, The Sunny Side of the Cumberland, essentially a journal of experiences in the mountains of eastern Tennessee.
Dromgoole contributed some forty short stories about mountaineers, Negroes, and "poor whites" to the Arena Magazine, McClure's, and the Coming Age, some of which were republished in The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee (1895) and Cinch and Other Stories: Tales of Tennessee (1898). For children she wrote The Farrier's Dog and His Fellow (1897), The Fortunes of a Fellow (1898), Hero-Chums (1898), A Moonshiner's Son (1898), Harum-Scarum Joe (1899), Three Little Crackers from Down in Dixie (1898), A Boy's Battle (1898), and The Best of Friends (1904).
Will had supplemented her income by serving, after her appointment in 1889, as assistant engrossing clerk of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and in 1885 and 1887 she was elected engrossing clerk of the Senate. She also taught a country school in Tennessee for a year and a public school in Temple, Texas.
In October 1904 she joined the staff of the Nashville Banner and originated a Sunday feature "Song and Story. " It was composed of original verse, prose anecdotes, and comments on life and literature; its humor, pathos, and sane advice endeared the author to thousands of readers. She continued "Song and Story" even during the First World War while she was serving as a regularly enlisted warrant officer in the United States naval reserve, in which capacity she made recruiting speeches and managed the library service for sailors.
At the close of the war Dromgoole was in great demand as a lecturer and reader of her poems and stories. Meanwhile her work had begun to receive recognition throughout the United States and even abroad. She died in her seventy-fourth year and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Murfreesboro.
Personality
Tenderness and sincerity in thought and simplicity and a kind of whimsical charm of style characterized her verse. Dromgoole was a master of the dialects of the mountaineer and the Negro of Tennessee, and told a story with naturalness and ease, whether it was humorous or tragic.