Elizabeth Eaton Converse (born August 3, 1924 – disappeared August 1974), was an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known under her professional name Connie Converse. She was active in New York City in the 1950s, and her work is among the earliest known recordings in the singer-songwriter genre of music.
In 1974, Converse left her family home in search of a new life and was not seen or heard from again. Despite the obscurity of her music during her lifetime, her work gained posthumous recognition after it was featured on a 2004 radio show. In March 2009, a compilation album of her work, How Sad, How Lovely, was released.
Biography
Early life
Converse was born in Laconia, New Hampshire on August 3, 1924. She was raised in Concord, New Hampshire as the middle child in a strict Baptist family; her father was a minister and her mother was "musical", according to music historian David Garland. Her elder brother by three years was Paul Converse and her younger brother by five years, Philip Converse, became a prominent political scientist.
Converse attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian and won eight academic awards, including an academic scholarship to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. After two years' study, she left Mount Holyoke and moved to New York City.
Career
During the 1950s, Converse worked for the Academy Photo Offset printing house in New York's Flatiron District. She first lived in Greenwich Village, then in the Hell's Kitchen and Harlem areas. She started calling herself Connie, a nickname she had acquired in New York. She began writing songs and performing them for friends, accompanying herself on guitar. She began smoking during this time and started drinking, behaviors strongly contrary to her religious upbringing. Possibly as a result, her parents rejected her music career, and her father never heard her sing before his death.
Converse's only known public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on The Morning Show on CBS with Walter Cronkite, which graphic artist Gene Deitch had helped to arrange. In 1956, she recorded an album for her brother, Phil, titled Musicks (Volumes I and II). By 1961 (the same year that Bob Dylan moved to Greenwich Village and quickly met mainstream success), Converse had grown frustrated trying to sell her music in New York. That year, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her brother Philip was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Converse worked in a secretarial job, and then as a writer for and managing editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1963.
Personal life
Converse was very private about her personal life. According to Deitch, she would respond to questions about her personal life with curt "yes" or "no" answers. Both Deitch and Connie's brother Philip have said it is possible she might have been a lesbian, although she never confirmed or denied this notion. Her nephew, Tim Converse, has said there is no evidence that she was ever involved in a romantic relationship. Her family noted that Connie relied more heavily on smoking and drinking towards the end of her time living in Michigan.
Disappearance
By 1973, Converse was burnt out and depressed. The offices of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which meant so much to her, had moved to Yale at the end of 1972 after being "auctioned off" without her knowledge. Converse's colleagues and friends pooled their money to give her a six-month trip to England in hopes of improving her mood, to no avail. Her mother requested that she join her on a trip to Alaska, and Converse grudgingly agreed. Her displeasure with the trip appeared to have contributed to her decision to disappear. Around that time, Converse was told by doctors that she needed a hysterectomy, and the information appeared to have devastated her.
In August 1974, days after her 50th birthday, Converse wrote a series of letters to family and friends suggesting her intention to make a new life in New York City. All were handwritten, according to author Howard Fishman who wrote the biography of her life in a book titled after the only letter Connie Converse typed and left behind in her filing cabinet: TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS: (If I'm Long Unheard From)