Popular early twentieth century writer-poet Jennie Harris Oliver was born in Michigan and became a school teacher at the age of sixteen. She moved to Kansas in 1891 and came to Fallis, Oklahoma, in 1892. Here she began to “peck out” her first story on a borrowed typewriter on ironed-out wrapping paper, and sold it to Munsey’s Magazine for $10. She sold The Music and the Dream for $175, which became part of the famous “Mokey Delano” series, later filmed by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Mrs. Oliver was named Oklahoma’s Poet Laureate in 1939 and her book, Red Earth, was published by friends as a memorial to her life and work as one of Oklahoma’s finest early day authors and poets.