Margaret Hill McCarter.
Margaret Hill McCarter was a teacher and author who became well known for her novels set against a background of the Kansas Prairies.
Margaret was born near Carthage, Indiana on May 2, 1860. Her parents, Thomas T. and Nancy Davis Hill, came to Indiana from North Carolina in 1858. They were Quakers, and through the Parker and Wickersham families, McCarter can trace her ancestry back to the members of that sect who came over with William Penn. She was educated in public schools, the Carthage High School, Earlham College, a Quaker institution at Richmond, Indiana, and in 1884, graduated from the State Normal School at Terre Haute, Indiana.
Topeka High School. Photo by Carol Highsmith.
She taught for nine years in Indiana public schools, and in 1888, she came to Topeka, Kansas, where she was an English teacher in the high school for nearly six years. On June 5, 1890, she was married to Dr. William A. McCarter. She has contributed to newspapers and magazines and is the author of The Cottonwood’s Story, Cuddy’s Baby, In Old Quivira, The Price of the Prairie, One Hundred Kansas Women, and The Peace of the Solomon Valley. She died in 1938.
Compiled by Kathy Alexander-Alexander/Legends of America, updated May 2024.
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