Ina Coolbrith (1842–1928)

Ina Donna Coolbrith was born Josephine D. Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois. She was a niece of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known as the Mormons. Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother subsequently left the Mormon church and remarried. In 1849, the family went by wagon train to California to follow the Gold Rush. She was educated in Los Angeles, where she began to publish poetry. She had a brief teenage marriage in 1858, and a baby son who died. Afterwards, she took her mother’s maiden name and began calling herself Ina Donna Coolbrith. In 1865, she moved to San Francisco, where she met writers such as Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, Bret Harte, and Charles Warren Stoddard. With the latter two, she formed the "Golden Gate Trinity" associated with the literary journal Overland Monthly, which she co-edited. She hosted a literary salon at her home and published four collections of poetry, including A Perfect Day (1881). She supported her mother, an orphaned niece and nephew, and Miller's young daughter Calle Shasta. She moved to Oakland to become the city librarian, a job she held for 19 years. After that, she returned to San Francisco and was invited to be the librarian of the Bohemian Club. She began to write an autobiography and a history of California literature, but the great fire that followed the 1906 earthquake destroyed her home and the work. Her friends helped set her up again in a new house, and she resumed writing and hosting literary salons and mentored a new generation of younger writers including Jack London. In 1915, she was named California's first poet laureate, the first poet laureate of any state. The city of San Francisco honored her by naming Ina Coolbrith Park in the Russian Hill district.