Madge A. Bigham

Madge A. Bigham was born in LaGrange, Georgia, in 1874, but her father, Rev. Robert William Bigham (1825-1900), was a Methodist parson, who frequently moved, serving as pastor at Methodist churches in most of the larger towns and cities in north Georgia. She attended the noted Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, Georgia, but returned to live with her father and other siblings in Demorest in Habersham County, Georgia. She was an aspiring author, perhaps inspired by her father, whose best-known work was *Vinny Leal’s Trip to the Golden Shore*, a religious children’s novel published posthumously in 1902.

Madge’s first book, *Tales of Mother Goose Land*, was not published until 1904 but by 1910 there were six, the last, *Fanciful Flower Tales*, published in 1910, the year she and her brother James and her two sisters, Kate and Eugenie, bought a house at what is now 503 Peeples Street SW in Atlanta’s West End. Madge spent the rest of her life in that house.

Madge was one of the pioneer’s in Atlanta’s kindergarten movement and operated her West End Kindergarten in a large rear wing that she had built especially for that purpose shortly before World War I. According to one source: “No expense was spared [by Bigham] to give West End one of the most commodious and best-equipped kindergartens in the city. A building especially for children’s use was erected in connection with the residence [on] Peeples Street. With an ideal of fresh air and sunshine, a large play-room was provided in connection with a work-room and forty-foot veranda for work and play in the open air.” She would continue to operate the kindergarten until the Depression forced her to close its doors. She died in Atlanta on 11 August 1957.