Elizabeth Conwell Smith Willson and Forceythe Willson papers

Elizabeth Conwell Smith Willson was an American poet. She was born in Laurel, Indiana in 1842 and attended Depauw Academy in New Albany, Indiana. In 1863 Willson married the poet Byron Forceythe Willson (1837-1867), the brother of Kentucky governor Augustus E. Willson. After their marriage, the couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts so Forceythe could oversee the education of his brother Augustus while at Harvard College (AB 1869). The couple had a son "Little Dolfi", who died after birth on June 1, 1864. Elizabeth, always in poor health, died shortly later at age 22 on October 13, 1864.

Byron Forceythe Willson was born in 1837 in Little Genessee, New York, and lived in Maysville and Covington, Kentucky and New Albany, Indiana. Forceythe attended Antioch College in Ohio, and Harvard University, but did not received degrees from either. He became an editorial writer for the Louisville Journal where he often defended the Union cause in the Civil War. He published some of his early poetry in the Louisville Journal, including his most famous work, The old Sergeant. This was reprinted privately in 1866 and then by Ticknor and Fields in Boston in 1867 as The old sergeant and other poems. Forceythe believed the living could communicate with the dead and that he was a medium through which this could be accomplished; many persons later observed him supposedly having conversations with the spirit of his dead wife. On February 2, 1867, at age 29, Forceythe died of a hemorrhage of the lung from tuberculosis. Both Elizabeth and Forceythe are buried in Conwell Cemetery in Laurel, Indiana.