Maud Hart Lovelace was born in Mankato, Minnesota on
April 25, 1892. Her maiden name was
Maud Palmer Hart. Her family consisted
of herself, her mother, Stella and father, Tom. She also had two sisters named
Kathleen and Helen. At a young age, it
became apparent that Maud had a love for reading and for writing. It is quoted that she would follow her
mother around her home and ask her questions like, “How do you spell going down
the street?”[i] "I lived the happiest childhood a child
could possibly know," quoted Maud Hart Lovelace.[ii]
Maud continued writing and making up stories, as it
was her favorite childhood pastime. As
stories got old to her, she began writing poetry and plays. At the young age of ten, a booklet of her
poems was printed; and at seventeen, she sold her first short story to the Los
Angeles Times for ten dollars.
In 1910, Maud graduated from high school and the Hart
family moved from Mankato to settle in Minneapolis, a city 80 miles north of
Mankato. While she lived in Minneapolis,
she attended the University of Minnesota.
She set sail for her long, dreamed of trip to Europe in 1914 and spent
her time up until the First World War in England. [iii]
She married a young newspaper reporter, who was also
famous for writing, named Delos W. Lovelace in 1917; which gave Maud the name
she is so well known for today. They
lived in Minnesota on the shore of Lake Minnetonka in a house, which still
stands today.
Delos W. Lovelace was responsible for giving Maud the
encouragement to take up the pastime she had forgotten so much about and return
to writing. She wrote and published her
first novel, The Black Angels, in 1926.
After seeing that her first novel was ever so popular, Maud continued
writing and published five more novels, two of which were written in
collaboration with her husband Delos.
After being married for 14 years,
the Lovelace’s had a baby girl and named her Merian. Maud remembers telling Merian bedtime stories about her own
childhood dreams, friends and memories.
It was these
stories that influenced the writing of all of the great Betsy-Tacy books. The
Betsy-Tacy books were based closely upon Maud's own life. Almost all of Betsy's
experiences were also Maud's. "Of course, I could make it all up, but in
these Betsy-Tacy stories, I love to work from real incidents," Maud wrote.
[iv]
Maud had first intended to write only one book that involved some of the most
important times she and her best friend Tacy had and how it was that they
became friends. At
the end of the book, Maud introduced a new character named Tib who they had
just met; this left readers wanting more.
As Maud’s reader became engaged in the first Betsy-Tacy book, they asked
for more books about Betsy. Maud
listened to what her readers wanted and brought Betsy through high school and
beyond college and eventually to marriage. In
the books, Betsy, Tacy and Tib were all real persons with different names. Betsy was actually Maud herself and her two
best friends Frances and Marjorie were Tacy and Tib. The name Tacy came from an old colonial newspaper article with
the name Tacy in it that Maud had read while beginning the series. Tib was a nickname that was actually given
to Marjorie. The girls were lifelong
friends. In
the story, Betsy was so much like Maud, that people often thought they knew her
so well by hearing her stories. Betsy
had two sisters, as did Maud and they were also portrayed in the book as real
people. The places in
the novels such as “Deep Valley”, The Big Hill and Lincoln Park really do
exist. In her books, she described
Mankato as Deep Valley and The Big Hill is what residents know today as Sibley
Park. Lincoln Park is one of the places
Maud chose not to rename as the park still exists today and is indeed, as
described in the book, triangular in shape.
Changing the names of places and people has caused some confusion for
those going in search of the things she spoke about in her book. Today,
the Hart’s house still stands. The
address is 333 Center Street. Betsy,
the character in the books, grew up in a house just one block from Maud. The house at 333 Hill Street, Betsy’s house,
closely resembles the house that Maud’s own family lived in. In
addition to the girls’ houses, a bench where Betsy and Tacy shared dinners
stood at the top of the hill on which they lived. In 1897 they began this tradition but the bench was removed in
1906, and is now restored in the Minnesota Historical Museum. Maud Hart Lovelace published her last book
in1955. It was entitled Betsy’s
Wedding. Maud
Hart Lovelace died on March 11, 1980.
Her legacy of writing 
and the beloved series that she never intended to
create still lives on. Many of her fans
belong to the National Organization based in Mankato where Maud did the
majority of her growing up, as did Betsy.
The Betsy-Tacy Society was
founded in 1990 by a group of twelve Mankato-area admirers of Maud Hart
Lovelace's life and writing; it now numbers more than one thousand members.
The goals of the Betsy-Tacy Society are: to promote
and maintain the availability of Mrs. Lovelace's work; to advocate for the reissue of any titles not
currently in print; to
preserve existing landmarks and sites associated with the real people and
places portrayed in the Betsy-Tacy books; and to sustain interest in the lifestyle of the period,
with special emphasis on family and women's history.
The society has done much more
than that since they became the BTS in 1990. To this day, they own the house where Tacy grew up and are
currently processing a bank loan to purchase Betsy’s house, which was recently
offered by the owners’ family. [v]
It is obvious that Maud Hart
Lovelace has been vital to the amount of visitors to the city of Mankato. She has shown many different ways that she
has attracted many people from far and long.
Excerpt by permission from
Erin Bourdeau, S01
Works
Cited