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Local figure

Betty Smith

The Federal Theater sent the playwright Betty Smith to Chapel Hill to work with Frederick H. Koch of the Carolina Playmakers, and she stayed on when the project expired. In a one-room house on North Street she wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, published in August 1943.

Source: NCpedia: Smith, Betty

1896–1972 as the Library of Congress records it · On the Friends’ Local Authors roster → · Library of Congress authority record ↗

5 indexed works are connected with this person.

Search these 5 works Research sources View indexed works ↓
Betty Smith, 1943
Betty Smith, 1943

Indexed works

Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.

Betty Smith : life of the author of A tree grows in Brooklyn

Yow, Valerie Raleigh · 2008

Valerie Raleigh Yow's biography of the novelist Betty Smith, who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and came to Chapel Hill in 1936. This second edition came from Wolf's Pond Press in Chapel Hill in 2008, 430 pages with illustrations and portraits, and the chapters run from her Brooklyn childhood in 1896 through Michigan, Chapel Hill and her death in 1972.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Library of Congress record: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972.

Library of Congress CH Historical Society NC Cardinal

The Betty Smith House : a Chapel Hill landmark

Lauder, Val; Beswick, Paul G. · 1984 · W.R.C. Smith Pub. Co.

An illustrated article on the Chapel Hill house of the novelist Betty Smith, who wrote 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn', taken from Southern Accents, volume 7, number 2, March and April 1984. Val Lauder and Paul G. Beswick are credited. The house is also known as the Mickle-Mangum Smith House, a recognized local landmark.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972.

UNC

William C. Parker papers, 1947-1949

Parker, William C. (William Covington) · 1947

Two years of papers, 1947 to 1949, left by William Covington Parker, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4965-z. Topics include Chapel Hill intellectual life and on American authors in North Carolina, naming Paul Green, Howard Washington Odum, Betty Smith and James H. Street.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972.

UNC

Samuel Moyle Boone photographic collection, circa late 1940s-early 1960s.

Boone, Samuel Moyle · 1944

Photographs by Samuel Moyle Boone from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, roughly 1,000 items across 2.5 linear feet in the North Carolina Collection at UNC. Topics include university buildings, the Old Well, the Morehead-Patterson Memorial Tower, the library, faculty and employees, and Tar Heel football, along with figures including Betty Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, Charles E. Rush and Louis Round Wilson.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972.

UNC

Charles Mills papers, 1937-1981.

Mills, Charles, 1914-1982 · 1937

Correspondence dominates the papers of Charles Mills (1914-1982), approximately 150 items in one linear foot dated 1937 to 1981, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4270. Subjects include American authors and novelists he wrote to or about, among them Paul Green, Betty Smith, Archibald Henderson, Robert Fitzgerald and Clare Leighton, and note a personal narrative of the Second World War in Burma. Chapel Hill social life anchors the local tie.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Smith, Betty, 1896-1972.

UNC

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 6 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Isaac Collier builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street Isaac Collier is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 315 East Rosemary Street between 1853 and 1858. The novelist Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, later lived there. People: Betty SmithSearch the index · NC Digital Collections: Chapel Hill Historic Sites Survey: Final Report (1992), p. 51
  2. Betty Smith comes to Chapel Hill with the Federal Theatre Project The Federal Theater sent Smith to Chapel Hill in 1936 to work with Frederick H. Koch of the Carolina Playmakers. She stayed when the federal project expired, helped Koch compile American Folk Plays and took his classes for him in his absence. People: Frederick H. KochSearch the index · Carolina Story: Betty Smith (Carolina's Literary History)
  3. Betty Smith edits a collection of plays with Frederick Koch and Robert Finch Smith coedited Plays for Schools and Little Theatres with Koch and Finch in 1937 and wrote a catalog of one-act plays. People: Frederick H. KochSearch the index · NCpedia: Smith, Betty
  4. Daphne Athas graduates from UNC Athas graduated from the university in 1943 after studying writing with Betty Smith and Phillips Russell. People: Betty Smith, Phillips RussellSearch the index · The Carolina Story: Daphne Athas (Carolina's Literary History)
  5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, written in Chapel Hill, is published Smith wrote the novel in a one-room house on North Street in Chapel Hill, rising about half past five and working against the chimney wall to keep warm. Harper published it on 17 August 1943 and it sold more than 150,000 copies within two weeks.Search the index · NCpedia: Smith, Betty
  6. Betty Smith is buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery Smith died in January 1972 after being moved to a convalescent home in Shelton, Connecticut. A funeral mass was said at St. Thomas More Church in Chapel Hill and she was buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery.Search the index · NCpedia: Smith, Betty

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.

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Named with them in the chronology

People named in the same dated entries as Betty Smith, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Search further

The index lists works with an Orange County connection. To find everything else about Betty Smith, search these catalogs.

Books about Betty Smith

Books by Betty Smith

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Photographs, papers, and newspapers

Searched with the Library of Congress heading Smith, Betty, 1896-1972, so the results are about this person and not others with the same name. Each link opens that catalog’s own results in a new tab. The Friends have not reviewed what they return.

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Research sources

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Picture: Betty Smith, 1943. Public domain. Photograph by Photographer not credited; Carolina Magazine, 1943; via Wikimedia Commons

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