Gertrude Harris Boatwright Claytor (October 1, 1888 – August 21, 1973) was an American poet.

Biography

Born in

Staunton, Virginia Staunton ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 25,750. In Virginia, independent cities a ...

, she later moved with her family to

Roanoke, Virginia Roanoke ( ) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It lies in Southwest Virginia, along the Roanoke River, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge range of the greater Appalachian Mountains. Roanok ...

, where she was privately educated. In 1908 she married William Graham Claytor (1886–1971), an engineer at the Roanoke Railway and Electric Company (later known as Appalachian Electric Power Company). Their five sons included William Graham Claytor Jr. (1912–1994), who was secretary of the navy from 1977 to 1979, deputy secretary of defense, acting secretary of transportation, and president of Southern Railway and of

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, and Robert Buckner Claytor, president of the Norfolk and Western Railway Company and chief executive officer of the

Norfolk Southern Corporation The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

. Late in the 1920s, Claytor began publishing poetry in such periodicals as the ''Carolina Quarterly'', ''Florida Magazine of Verse'', '' Georgia Review'', ''The New York Times'', ''

Prairie Schooner ''Prairie Schooner'' is a literary magazine published quarterly at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with the cooperation of UNL's English Department and the University of Nebraska Press. It is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and was first publi ...

'', and ''Saturday Review of Literature''. She also published two collections, ''Sunday in Virginia and Other Poems'' (1951) and ''Mirage at Midnight and Other Poems'' (1960). She won the annual "Poetry Society of America" prize in 1932. A close friend of

Edgar Lee Masters Edgar Lee Masters (August 23, 1868 – March 5, 1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of '' Spoon River Anthology'', ''The New Star Chamber and Other Essays'', ''Songs and Satires'', ''The Great V ...

, author of ''

Spoon River Anthology ''Spoon River Anthology'' is a 1915 collection of short free verse poems by Edgar Lee Masters. The poems collectively narrate the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Maste ...

'' (1915), Claytor presented her collection of signed first editions, letters, manuscript poems, and other materials that Masters had given her to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, and the material is held in the Princeton University Library's Special Collection The Gertrude Claytor Collection also includes photographs of both Claytor and Masters.

References

Sources

* John T. Kneebone et al., eds., ''Dictionary of Virginia Biography'' (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 1998- ), 3:291-292. 1888 births 1973 deaths Writers from Roanoke, Virginia American women poets People from Staunton, Virginia 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers Appalachian writers {{US-poet-1950s-stub