Kansas Women In Literature by Nettie Garmer Barker

Myra Williams Jarrell, the daughter of the late Archie L. Williams, for thirty years, the attorney for the Union Pacific Railway in Kansas, and the grand-daughter of Judge Archibald Williams, the first United States Circuit Judge of Kansas, appointed by Lincoln, comes of a literary family. All of the men and some of the women on the father's side of the family and also, on the mother's to a great extent, had literary talent.

As a child, she cherished an ambition to write and when occasionally one of her letters to St. Nicholas saw publication, she felt she had crossed the Alps of her desire. Her first real story, however, was written as she rocked the cradle of her first born. The day, when she first saw her "stuff" in print, stands out in her memory second only to the hallowed days of her personal history, her wedding day and the days upon which her children were born.