In the spring of 2015 I participated in a GoSmokies group hike near the Cosby Campground that included a stop at a cemetery that includes the grave of Ella V. Costner, known as the “Poet Laureate of the Smokies.”

I had never heard of her, but I took a photo of her headstone.

What I did not know then was the woman often called “Miss Ella V. Costner” had a life that “Poet Laureate” does not begin to capture.

Years later while organizing photos, I came across the one of her headstone I had taken in 2015 and took a deeper dive.

I found a woman who lived an amazingly rich and varied life.

Here is an edited version of a timeline of her life generated by Google’s NotebookLM from my research. The source material are newspaper articles and an excellent 2012 Smokies Life magazine article by William A. Hart.

A life lived big

February 20, 1894: Ella V. Costner is born in a two-room log cabin on Crying Creek, near Cosby Campground in the Smoky Mountains area called the Mountain Rest community. (She added the “V.” after she became an adult because she just liked the way it sounded.)

1908: Ella leaves home, possibly to escape an arranged marriage and malicious gossip, for nearby Newport.

1908-1911: Ella works as a domestic for Mrs. Cora Massey Mims, wife of a druggist, attends Newport High School and East Tennessee State Normal School (now East Tennessee State University) in Johnson City.

1911: Ella is inspired to become a nurse after reading the writings of Ellen Key. a feminist writer and suffragist.

1915 or 1916: Ella moves to San Antonio, Texas, after securing employment through her aunt.

1920: Ella graduates with honors from John Sealy Hospital School of Nursing in Galveston, Texas and takes a supervisory position.

1921: Ella, on a “Great Migration,” attends the presidential inauguration of Warren G. Harding in Washington, D.C. and takes a new position at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

1922: Ella is accepted for a Civil Service Commission position and assigned to Colon Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

Summer 1922: Ella arrives in Panama.

1922-1925: Ella works as a nurse in Panama, including a two-month trip to Salvador to nurse the wife of the U.S. Ambassador. She has a relationship with Juan Demostenes Arosemena, the governor of Colon (a province in Panama) and later president of Panama.

1925 (approximately): Ella resigns her position with the Civil Service.

1929: Ella marries a Dr. Aldenberg, who she met in the summer in San Antonio, Texas. It was an abusive relationship.

1931: Mac McMahan, a childhood friend, asks Ella to go to Cuba with him but she only goes as far as Miami because she discovers he is married with a son and wife in Cuba.

Early 1930s: Ella divorces Dr. Aldenberg and returns to Tennessee.

Spring 1933: Ella opens The White Rock Inn in Cosby and becomes known for bootlegging.

August 1933: Ella is raided for alcohol at The White Rock Inn, but shrewdly escapes arrest. She closes the inn after the season.

November 15, 1933: Ella’s brother, Isaac “Ike” Costner, participates in a mail truck robbery in Charlotte. The robbery, sometimes referred to Charlotte’s “Crime of the Century,” netted over $100,000 and was carried out by members of the notorious “Touhy Gang” of Chicago, headed by Roger “The Terrible” Touhy, a rival of Frank Nitti and the Chicago Outfit.

1934: Ella visits the Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte to visit the then pregnant Mae Blalock of Knoxville, girlfriend of one of the men arrested in the mail truck robbery (Basil “The Owl” Banghart) and who herself was arrested in Baltimore during the investigation. Blalock was just days away from her expected due date.

June 1938: Ella and her father, L.F. Costner, are arrested for allegedly receiving and concealing loot from the Charlotte mail truck robbery in 1993. Ella is briefly jailed in Knoxville.

September 1938: A federal jury found Ella Costner, then 44, not guilty of the charges stemming from Charlotte mail truck robbery while finding her father, then 67, guilty. She had helped authorities locate some of the buried money in Cocke County. (Brothers Ike and Rufus served long federal prison sentences for crimes related to the robbery.)

Spring 1940 or 1941: Ella returns from a nine-month private nursing assignment in Philadelphia.

May 12, 1941: Ella, at nearly 50, is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps. She said she was 20 years younger.

December 7, 1941: Bombing of Pearl Harbor.

March 1942: Ella arrives in Honolulu, Hawaii, to treat victims of the Pearl Harbor attack.

December 28, 1944: Ella is transferred to Guam, where she treats casualties from Iwo Jima.

May 1945: Ella suffers a head cut and fractured skull in a jeep accident in Guam.

End of WWII: Ella retires from the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant.

1951-1955: Ella, in her late 50s and early 60s, attends Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City and earns a BA degree in English in 1955.

Late 1960s-Late 1970s: Ella dedicates herself to writing and publishing.

1967: Publishes “Lamp in the Cabin”.

1968: Publishes “Poems of Paradise”.

1969: Publishes “Barefoot in the Smokies”.

December 31, 1969: Awarded the Certificate of Merit by the Board of Editors of the International Who’s Who in Poetry.

1971: Publishes “Song of Life in the Smokies”.

1971: Ella is named “Poet Laureate of the Smokies” by a joint resolution of the Tennessee Legislature.

1970s-1980s: Ella lobbies in Washington, D.C., for women to be admitted to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

1979: Publishes “Love Affair Around the World – Volume I and II”.

1980s: Ella is a renown storyteller at the Cosby Folk Life Festival.

July 1982: Ella dies at Oteen Veterans Hospital in Asheville of cancer at age 88. She is buried in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near the Cosby Campground.

Ella V. Costner sources

The timeline of her life is drawn from these sources.

• Figart, Frances. “MOUNTAINS Remembering Poet Laureate Ella V. Costner.” Asheville Citizen-Times, 5 February 2022, page 2A
• “Banghart Given 99-year Sentence,” Asheville Citizen-Times, 14 March 1934, pages 1-2
• “Costner’s Father and Sister Face Charges,” Asheville Citizen-Times, 4 June 1938, page 11.
• “Ella Costner Blames Prohibition Law for Her Family’s Trouble,” Asheville Citizen-Times, 5 June 1938, page 5
• Hart, William A., Jr. “Ella V. Costner: A Life Without Fear.” Smokies Life magazine, Vol. 6, Issue 2, September 2012.
• “Hawaii’s Women in Uniform for World War II,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 23 March 1944, Page 3
• Costner, Ella V., Lt. “On Army Nursing Service, Letters From Lt. Ella Costner,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 24 January 1945, page 3
• Costner, Ella V., Lt. “On Army Nursing Service, Letters From Lt. Ella Costner,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 26 January 1945, page 6
• Costner, Ella V., Lt. “Work of A War Nurse ‘Out Forward’ In the Marianas.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 8 March 1945, page 8
• “Costner’s Sister Makes Visit to Mae Blalock,” The Charlotte News, 23 March 1934, Page 1
• “Jury Finds L.F. Costner Guilty,” The Greeneville Sun, 1 October 1938. Page 1
• “Elder Costner Found Guilty, Father Convicted, But Daughter Freed of Concealing Charge,”The Knoxville Journal, 1 October 1938, pages 1-2
• “Prohibition blamed by Costner,” The Knoxville News Sentinel, 4 June 1938, page 1
• “A Costner in Better Light,” The Knoxville News Sentinel, 1 March 1942, page 21
• “Miss Costner on Latest List of Poets,” The Knoxville News Sentinel, 7 December 1969, page 76
• “Smokies’ Poet Laureate, Ella V. Costner, 88, Dies.” The Knoxville News Sentinel, 13 July 1982, page 18

(The Gosmokies site is transitioning to this Facebook group.)