May 31, 1893

According to a publisher:

'Elizabeth Coatsworth was born in Buffalo, New York on May 31, 1893, but she lived in Massachusetts and Maine for most of her life. At the young age of 5, she lived both in the Alps and the Egyptian deserts. Coatsworth authored more than one hundred books. While it is the stories she wrote for children that have gathered the most attention and are best remembered today, she also wrote adult fiction and poetry, as well as memoirs. There is a common thread running through all of Coatsworth’s writing though, and that is the reverence she had for her home state of Maine. She began her career publishing her poetry in magazines. Her first book was a poetry collection for adults, Fox Footprints, in 1912. Coatsworth graduated from Vassar College in 1915 as Salutatorian. In 1916, she received a Master of Arts from Columbia University. In 1929, Elizabeth was married to the author of The Outermost House, Henry Beston, and with him had a daughter, Kate Barnes. After the marriage, the couple divided their time between an old house overlooking the harbor of Hingham, Massachusetts, and “Chimney Farm” located in Maine. Elizabeth was very accomplished in the area of literature and writing. Not only did she write poetry, but was also a novelist and an author of children’s stories, winning the Newbury Medal in 1931 for The Cat Who Went to Heaven.'

Another site fills out a picture:

'.... In 1927 Louise Seaman (Bechtel) at Macmillan published her first children's book, a book of poetry called The Cat and the Captain.

'Then at 36 Elizabeth Coatsworth married Henry Beston, a natural history writer, who would also write two fine collections of fairy tales. Family life with two daughters kept them closer to the old house in Hingham, Massachusetts and later to their beloved Nobleboro, Maine farm, but she and her husband continued to explore.

'Beston died in 1968. Elizabeth Coatsworth lived on alone at the farm, with visits from her family and friends, surrounded by treasured objects of a long life. In her book, "Personal Geography Almost an Autobiography" (1976) written when she was in her eighties, she writes:

'"I have a thousand memories. I could, I suppose, travel still, but so cautiously and in such a diminished world! I am content to remember larger times. The world in which I live is enough for me. After so many travels, I am home, and my happiness here is no less than it was in foreign lands and my sense of wonder has not dulled with all these years. I am as happy as an old dog stretched out in the sunlight. I remember other times, other places, but (in the sunlight) I am content with the here and now."

'She was buried next to her husband in the graveyard of their farm.'