Prominent American author Ella Rhoads Higginson (1862?-1940) was born Ella Rhoads in Council Grove, Kansas. As a child, she traveled with her family by horse-drawn carriage over the Oregon Trail to settle in the State of Oregon. Raised in Portland and Oregon City, Higginson attended public school and was also privately tutored. During her adolescence, Higginson began writing short stories and submitting them to newspapers and journals to be considered for publication. Her efforts were successful and over twenty of her stories were published during this time, appearing under various pseudonyms in publications in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.

Like other celebrated American writers of the late nineteenth century such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, Higginson spent formative early years in journalism. At age sixteen, she began work on the Oregon City Enterprise, a local newspaper, where she learned to set type, write editorials, and correct proofs. She would hold various editorial positions on newspapers and literary journals throughout her career.

In 1885, she married Russell Carden Higginson (1852-1909), a descendant of Puritan minister Francis Higginson and cousin of author Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Three years later, the couple moved to the Washington Territory. In this remote corner of the Northwest, Higginson began to devote herself to writing poetry as well as prose. She soon rose to international fame. A prolific writer, she became the author of over eight hundred works, including the novel Mariella, of Out-West; story collections The Flower that Grew in the Sand, A Forest Orchid, and From the Land of the Snow Pearls; poetry collections The Voice of April-Land and When the Birds Go North Again; and nonfiction Alaska, the Great Country. Her best-known work, the poem "Four-Leaf Clover," first published in the West Shore magazine in 1890, was a sensation, widely reprinted throughout the nation. Critics compared her writing to works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Émile Zola, and other distinguished authors. Her poems were set to music by well-known composers, recorded, and performed internationally by dramatic singers such as Enrico Caruso.

Locally, Higginson was actively involved in community and civic affairs. She was an honorary member of various societies including the Progressive Literary and Fraternal Club, the Bellingham Soroptimists and the Washington State Federation of Women's Clubs. She was deeply concerned with issues affecting women, including female education and the institution of marriage. In an 1889 article in West Shore, she argued that the "real evil was not that divorce was too easy, but that marriage was too easy, and that there should be a law preventing marriage before the age of thirty, especially if the woman was homeless."*

Higginson was also significantly involved with the Normal School (later Western Washington University), helping determine the design of Main Building (now Old Main) and donating books to the school's library. She also devoted considerable time and energy to the formation and support of the Bellingham Bay Public Library, of which she became a long-time board member.

In 1912, Higginson served as the campaign manager for her friend Frances C. Axtell, who successfully ran for election to the Washington State House of Representatives after most women received the right to vote in Washington State. Higginson wrote the play, Just Like the Men, loosely based on this experience. Higginson's last public honor was her election in 1931 by the Washington Federation of Women's Clubs as the first Poet Laureate of Washington State.

Ella Higginson died at her home in Bellingham, Washington on December 27, 1940. She is buried beneath a self-designed granite monument in Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham.

*Cited in Koert, Dorothy. The Lyric Singer: A Biography of Ella Higginson. Bellingham, Washington: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies & Fourth Corner Registry, 1985, page 52.

Note: Additional biographical information on Ella Higginson provided in 2025 by Dr. Laura Fernandes Laffrado, Professor in the Department of English at Western Washington University and author of Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature.