Mae St. John

Mae St. John Bramhall, born Mae Laws around 1861 in Richmond, Indiana, was a 19th-century American actress and writer. She was the second daughter of Joseph and Cornelia (Williams) Laws, and her mother, Cornelia Laws St. John, was a poet and songwriter. St. John received her schooling in the public schools of Richmond and Chicago, with an additional period of study at St. Mary's School in Reddington, Ohio. Her family relocated from Richmond to Chicago when she was nearly grown, and prior to entering the theater, she was recognized as a prominent figure in Chicago society.

St. John pursued a career in comic opera during the 1880s, appearing on Broadway in 1886 in The Gypsy Baron. In 1889, she married Anson Dudley Bramhall of New York City, after which the couple spent two years in Japan. During that time, Bramhall wrote her first book, Japanese Jingles, published in Tokyo in 1891 by T. Hasegawa and dedicated to her uncle and aunt, Dr. and Mrs. James F. Hibberd. Charles Scribner and Sons held exclusive American sales rights to the volume. She also contributed correspondence to several prominent American newspapers while residing in Japan. Financial difficulties led to her husband's business failure and the couple's subsequent separation.

Bramhall later lived in El Paso, Texas, and visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. By 1894 she had settled in New York City, where she wrote sketches of child life in Japan for Harper's Bazaar. Harper and Brothers published an expanded version of that work in 1894 under the title The Wee Ones of Japan, with illustrations by Charles Dater Weldon. The book examined Japanese children from infancy through their school years, covering their dress, play, study, and surrounding customs. She additionally published Around the World at Leisure Letters.

Bramhall died on February 5 or 7, 1897, at the Home for Incurables in Fordham, Bronx, New York, at the age of approximately 36. She had spent the final two years of her life largely withdrawn from public life. Her only legacy to her adopted son, Dudley Bramhall of Chappaqua, New York, was a collection of unpublished manuscripts. Her poem "The Japanese Good Morning" appeared in the January 1897 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine, published the same year as her death.