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Cora Miranda Baggerly Older (1875 – September 26, 1968) was an American writer and historian known for her California-based writing and activism. She often collaborated on social issues with her husband, Fremont Older, and she is now best remembered as a writer and historian of Californian events and people.

Early life

Cora Miranda Baggerly was born in Clyde New York in 1875. She had a brother, Hilland Baggerly, who later worked in journalism as well. She attended Syracuse University.

Writing career

Older's work covered a variety of mediums including novels, reviews, and magazine articles, often tackling social issues; she also wrote biographies of William Randolph Hearst and his father. She published her last book in 1961, seven years before her death. At one point, another writer described Older as "a woman whose womanly attributes commend a nobility of California's authors." She wrote under her married title as "Mrs. Fremont Older."

Personal life

In 1893, she met newspaper editor Fremont Older while on summer vacation from Syracuse. She and her classmates had performed in a play in Sacramento, which Fremont Older happened to have attended. They quickly became engaged and married a month later on August 22. In 1912, the couple purchased some land and then two years built later Woodhills, a house of hybrid architectural features that Cora Older mostly directed. The property today is now a regional park known as the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve, and it has a "Cora Older Trail" available to the public. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, she was associated with fellow activist and writer Stella Wynne Herron.

References

1. Conaway, Peggy (15 November 2010). "Los Gatos History Photo: Baggerly Connection". The Mercury News. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
2. ^ "Older, Cora (Miranda) Baggerly". Encyclopedia.
3. "WHO WAS FREMONT OLDER?". Milpitas Historical Society. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
4. Mills, W. H. (1922). Lyons, Louis S.; Wilson, Josephine (eds.). "Noble Women Who Inspire". Who's Who Among the Women of California: 126 – via Google Books.
5. Ralston, John (10 April 2011). "Fremont and Cora Older House, Saratoga". Los Altos Hills Historical Society. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
6. Leonard, John William; Marquis, Albert Nelson (1915). "O's". Who's Who in America. 8: 1757 – via Google Books.
7. "Fremont Older Open Space Preserve (and lower Stevens Creek County Park)". Trailstompers Guide to SF Bay Area Trail Running. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
8. Reed, Candace (November 8, 1977). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Woodhills". National Park Service. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
9. "Trails". Open Space. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
10. "Terpsichorean Boost for La Follette". The San Francisco Examiner. 14 October 1924. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
11. "Stella Herron, Noted Writer". The San Francisco Examiner. 4 March 1966. Retrieved 17 August 2019.

Further reading

• Men and Women of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries, 1910, p. 1261. Google Books.

External links

• Media related to Cora Baggerly Older at Wikimedia Commons
• Bibliography of Cora Miranda Baggerly Older (1875-1968) from the Holdings of the California State Library System. Museum of the City of San Francisco.

• 1875 births
• 1968 deaths
• Syracuse University alumni
• Activists from California
• Historians from California
• American women historians
• Activists from New York (state)
• Historians from New York (state)
• Historians of California
• 20th-century American historians
• 20th-century American women writers