Beatrice Witte Ravenel

Beatrice Witte Ravenel (August 24, 1870 – March 15, 1956) was an American poet associated with the Charleston Renaissance in South Carolina. Early life Beatrice Witte was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on Aug. 24, 1870, the third of six daughters of Charlotte Sophia (Reeves) Witte, who was of French Huguenot descent, and Charles Otto Witte, a German-born banker and businessman. In her teens, her family lived in a house that is now the Ashley Hall school. She showed early intellectual promise and was educated at the Charleston Female Seminary. In 1889, she went on to study at the women's annex of Harvard University, the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women (shortly to be renamed Radcliffe College). She remained there for five years and was active in literary circles, publishing poetry in The Harvard Advocate (a literary magazine), and stories in The Harvard Monthly, of which she subsequently became an editor. She also published her poems and stories in Scribner's Magazine, the Chap-Book Magazine, the Literary Digest, and other magazines of the day. In 1900 she married Francis 'Frank' Gualdo Ravenel, whose mother was the writer Harriott Horry Ravenel. They had a daughter, Beatrice St. Julien Ravenel, who would go on to become a writer on architecture and Charleston history. The couple lived south of Charleston, initially supported mainly by the fortune left to Ravenel by her father, and during this period Ravenel wrote little.