Mrs. L. L. Huffman

Minnie Enolia Beam Huffman

Does a garden writer have to write a book to be considered a garden writer?

No, she does not.

For example, there is Mrs. L. L. Huffman, who as far as I know, never published a book. I found her on the pages of The Charlotte Observer, specifically on March 22, 1952, when I was finishing up research on Viola Brainerd Baird. Mrs. Huffman wrote a rather extensive garden column and referenced Baird’s book, Wild Violets of North America.

I was immediately interested and hurriedly searched on Newspapers.com to see if I could find out what else Mrs. Huffman wrote. I came up with nothing, not even the article I had just been reading, so I parked her on my list, finished my post on Viola Brainerd Baird, then took a side trip, of sorts, to find another used book that was listed on that page. More on that later.

But I could not get the mysterious Mrs. L. L. Huffman out of my mind. A few days later, I searched again and this time….

I found her in The Salisbury Post, February 12, 1953

Mrs. L. L. Huffman

I must not have put spaces between the L. L. in her name when I originally searched for her.

But it took a little bit more searching to find out her first name and maiden name and other biographical information.

Thank goodness she gave a party for her mother’s 80th birthday, and someone thought to do a big write-up in the local paper about it. With her mother’s name, Mrs. Charles Beam, I was able to work back through ancestry.com and newspaper archives to find Mrs. Huffman.

For this post, I’m choosing to call her Mrs. Huffman because that’s how she always referred to herself.

Biography

Mrs. Huffman was born in 1890 to Charles W. and Susan Beam and given the name Minnie Enolia Beam. In the 1910 census, she was 19 years old, the oldest of eight daughters. (I think there were eventually 10 children.) Her occupation was listed as a farm laborer. I assume she was working on her father’s farm near Cherryville, North Carolina.

She attended Lenoir Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina, and in 1915, taught school in Lincoln and Gaston counties.

She married her husband, Lester L. Huffman in 1916. He was a Lutheran minister. I believe they met while students at Lenoir Rhyne College, which they both attended. Immediately after the wedding, which was on a Monday morning, they left for a new home in Tom’s Brook, Virginia. Reverend Huffman then died in 1918 from influenza, leaving Mrs. Huffman with one son, Richard, born in 1917, and pregnant with their second son, Harold, born in 1919.

By the 1920 census, Mrs. Huffman was once again living with her parents, but no occupation was listed. When the 1930 census came around, she was living in her own home in Lincolnton, North Carolina with her two sons. In 1940, she was in a different house in Lincolnton, living with her mother and her youngest son. Her occupation was listed as writer.

Mrs. Huffman passed away in 1995 at the age of 104.

Her Writing

According to her obituary, Mrs. Huffman wrote a Sunday garden column for The Charlotte Observer for 28. years. I couldn’t quite figure out when she started writing for them and briefly thought that perhaps she was the columnist for the newspaper before Elizabeth Lawrence, a well-known southern garden writer, was the columnist.

However, I found images of the paper from the early 1970s showing columns by Mrs. Huffman side by side with columns by Elizabeth Lawrence, showing they were both writing for the newspaper at the same time. Imagine a newspaper with a two-page spread devoted to gardening!

I also discovered that Mrs. Huffman was an award-winning writer, having won an essay contest in 1935 about aviation in Charlotte. Her prize was an airplane ride over the city.

In 1936, she was named a supervisor for the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration.

I looked for a book written by Mrs. Huffman but came up empty-handed. But she was still a garden writer, one who wrote and spoke on a variety of topics, ranging from violets to children in the garden to how to plan a landscape around your house.

For example:

Related to garden gates, she is quoted as saying,

“A garden just isn’t a garden without a garden gate. A garden should be a secluded place, made so by tall outlining shrubbery or a fence, but most of all a garden must have a gate to say hello and good-bye to the visitors.”

and

“A perfect garden must have five things: a focal point, balance, sequence, proportion, and simplicity.”

With that quote, she is listed as a “well-known Charlotte landscape gardener and garden writer.” I assume she knew Elizabeth Lawrence, who was also well-known as a Charlotte gardener and garden writer. Before I learned of Mrs. Huffman, I would have assumed that Elizabeth Lawrence was the only well-known garden writer from Charlotte.

As mentioned, I discovered Mrs. Huffman through violets!

In March 1953, she started one of her columns with information about wild violets.

Article by Mrs. Huffman, March 22, 1953

And that brings us full circle to the beginning of this article. A lost lady of garden writing need not have written a book to be on my list!

Questions

I’m pretty sure Mrs. Huffman never wrote a book, but I wonder if she wrote any magazine articles?

Was she really a landscape gardener, the kind who might help others plan their gardens?

What other jobs did she have to support herself and her two sons? Did she go back to teaching after her husband died in 1918?

To what did she credit her longevity? And what was the last thing she ever wrote?

I’ll likely never find answers to those questions, but that’s fine. At least, after a bit of searching. “Mrs. L. L. Huffman” is no longer a by-line in a newspaper but is another found lost lady of garden writing.

The next article will be in two weeks, on May 1, revealing the book and author advertised on the garden page where I found Mrs. Huffman. In the meantime, if you are new to these articles, feel free to scroll back through all the lost ladies. And if you want to read more of my garden musing, visit my website and check out my blog.

Until May 1st!