Biography

United States writer. Bertha McKee was born on a farm in Pennsylvania but grew up in various towns in rural Texas. She received a BA from Southwestern University in 1910 and a Master's degree in English from the University of Texas in 1918. She taught English and mathematics in Dalhart, Galveston, and Jacksonville before settling in Austin with her husband, James Frank Dobie, the American folklorist, writer, and liberal newspaper columnist, whom she had met at Southwestern University and married in 1916. She too became a writer, mainly on gardening topics, and contributed to numerous periodicals, including Nature Magazine, New York Herald Tribune Magazine, and Garden Digest, and was later an assistant editor of the Texas Folklore Society's publications. She was an avid gardener and a member of the Audubon Society. In 1934, she made a long collecting trip in the state of Chihuahua.