Born March 18, 1874 in Humbolt, Kansas, Sarah Elizabeth Sadie Wert was the only surviving child of Lizzy Wert, a first generation English immigrant and single mother. At four years old, Sadie and Lizzy moved to the small, wild mining town of Lead in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. There she spent her childhood and most of her adolescence. At sixteen, Sadie began teaching in Lead's school to save up money for university. Sadie attended Vassar College from 1893 to1894, then transferred to the University of Nebraska in 1894. There, she met her husband Charles William Taylor before graduating with a degree in education in 1898. She returned to Lead to resume teaching for another year, after which she married Charles William and moved to Ohiowa, Nebraska, where CW served as Superintendent of Schools. They would visit Lead every summer to visit friends and family. Sadie died on May 8th, 1962. Sadie was a prolific writer and published poet. Some of her work is featured in her book of poems titled Hearth Stones published in 1939. Though she had completed a manuscript for a memoir of her life growing up in Lead, South Dakota in the late nineteenth century, the book was never published in her lifetime. Her great-granddaughter Betsy Quinn has compiled, edited, and published her memoir on her behalf.
