Gladys Hasty Carroll

Who was Gladys Hasty Carroll?

Gladys Hasty Carroll was an American novelist who was a published author from the late 1920s into the 1980s. In her fiction and non-fiction, Carroll wrote about what she knew and people that she loved: specifically, the Southern Maine rural community known as Dunnybrook in South Berwick, Maine. Carroll believed that the history that mattered most was the history of common folk and her literature presented their stories and stories of those like them.

Carroll was born June 26, 1904, in Rochester, New Hampshire, and was raised in South Berwick, Maine. She grew up on the family farm of her parents Warren Verd Hasty and Emma Frances Dow, living with her brother Harold, her grandfather George Bradford Hasty and paternal aunt Vinnie.

As a child she was taught in a one room school house. To keep her occupied, her teachers told her to write on any topic she wished once she finished her school work. She attended and graduated from Berwick Academy and then attended Bates College, being the first person in her family to pursue higher education. Her Bates friends nicknamed her "Sunny" because of her optimistic personality. She graduated in 1925, and was married the next day in the Bates College chapel to Herbert Allen Carroll. Their marriage lasted 58 years, until Dr Carroll's death in April 1983. Herbert's career and pursuits of various degrees took the couple all over America including Massachusetts, Chicago, Minneapolis and Manhattan.