Louise McNeill (Pease) was born on January 9, 1911, to a family that had lived in the same farm since 1769. It was located in Buckeye in West Virginia’s Pocahontas County.
Her father was a writer and at age 16 using a borrowed typewriter, she wrote a poem and decided to be a poet. She sold short poems to the Saturday Evening Post at $5 a line. In 1931, she published her first collection of poems, Mountain White.
She enrolled at Concord College (now University) in West Virginia, where she became a member of Alpha Sigma Tau. A 1936 graduate, she went on to earn a master’s degree in English from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She married Roger Pease in 1939.
Pease spent three decades as an educator. English and history were her specialties and she taught them at Aiken (South Carolina) Preparatory School, West Virginia University, Potomac State College, Concord College and Fairmont State College. In 1959, she earned a doctorate from West Virginia University. Pease retired from teaching in 1973 so that she could devote her time to writing. Her poems evoked the imagery of West Virginia – the mountains, dialects and glimpses of life in Appalachia.
Washington DC’s West Virginia Society named her West Virginia Daughter of the Year in 1978. A year later, on February 16, 1979, then-Governor of West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller, appointed her West Virginia’s poet laureate.
Pittsburgh Press, February 19, 1979
She was installed as West Virginia’s poet laureate on Saturday, May 12, at the Cultural Center in Charleston. The Anchor of Alpha Sigma Tau included a story about her. Governor Rockefeller noted that his admiration was based on her ability to capture the cadence and language along with the history of West Virginians. Elderberry Flood, which tells the story of West Virginia in poetic form, had just been published.
The Anchor of Alpha Sigma Tau, Fall 1979
The Anchor of Alpha Sigma Tau, Fall 1979
In 1989, West Virginia University inducted her into its Academy of Distinguished Alumni and later that year awarded her an honorary doctorate. The West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University holds her papers in its collection.
Pease’s last collection of poems, Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems, debuted in 1991. She died on June 18, 1993, at the age of 82.
