J. Frank Dobie - Early Years

Early Years

Dobie was born on a ranch in Live Oak County, Texas, and was the eldest of six children. When he was young, his father, Richard, read to him from the Bible while his mother, Ella, read to him from stories such as Ivanhoe and Pilgrim's Progress. At 16, Dobie moved to Alice, the seat of Jim Wells County, Texas, where he lived with his grandparents and finished high school. In 1906, he enrolled in Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where he was introduced to English poetry by a professor, who urged him to become a writer. While in college he also met "the ever loyal" Bertha McKee (1890–1974), whom he married in 1916.

After he graduated in 1910, Dobie worked briefly for newspapers in San Antonio and Galveston, before gaining his first teaching job at a high school in Alpine in southwestern Texas. In 1911, he returned to Georgetown to teach at the Southwestern Preparatory School, and in 1913, he went to Columbia University in New York City to work on a master's degree. In 1914, he returned to Texas to join the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. He also became affiliated with the Texas Folklore Society. In 1917, he left the university to serve in the field artillery in World War I. He was briefly sent overseas at the end of the war and was discharged in 1919.