Ruth Ann Musick

Ruth Ann Musick (September 17, 1897 – July 2, 1974) was an American author and folklorist specializing in West Virginia. She was the sister of artist Archie Musick and niece of author John R. Musick.

Born in Kirksville, Missouri, to Levi Prince Musick and Zada (or Sadie) Goeghegan, Musick received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Kirksville State Teacher's College (now Truman State University) in 1919. From September 1919 to June 1921 Musick taught at Luana High School, Luana, Iowa, before moving to Garwin, Iowa in 1921, where she taught at Garwin High School until June 1922. She then continued her education at the State University of Iowa, graduating with a Master of Science in mathematics in 1928. Between 1923 and 1931, Musick taught at Logan High School, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. For five years beginning in 1931 she taught at Phoenix Union High School, Phoenix, Arizona, before returning to the Midwest in 1938 to begin her doctoral study at the State University of Iowa. It was here that her interest in folklore developed. She was granted a Doctor of Philosophy in English in 1943. Her dissertation was a never-published novel, “Hell’s Holler,”[1] dealing with the primitive conditions of her native Chariton River Valley and its tensions with the college of osteopathic medicine in nearby Kirksville, Missouri. The novel reflects in some measure her brief and unhappy marriage to an alcoholic artist, a match of which her family disapproved (her mother refused to attend the wedding) and which ended in divorce in the late 1940s.

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