Mrs. Cautley, who published under the name of L.R. Cautley was born July 19th, 1854 in Richmond, Henrico, Virginia. Her maiden name is Lucy Randolph Daniel.
It is unclear when she married her husband Richard K. Cautley. But it would be sometime after 1880 census which reordered her as single and living in Virginia still, she was 26 at the time. It is likely that after she married her husband that she moved to Baltimore with him.
Cautley shared a ton of short stories and poems within the Club. However, few of her works were ever published. What I could find was an essay on Rudyard Kipling’s works and a poem titled “Betrayal” that appeared in Harper’s Monthly. The poem used personification to convey emotions in a unique and engaging way. My favorite lines from the poem were,
“And all the little world around her smiled,
By memories of their own fair youth beguiled.”
After her husband, Richard K. Cautley died, she relocated to New York on 0ctober 19th, 1923 to be with her oldest son who worked at Cornell University as an engineering instructor. She was 69 when she first arrived. She had two other sons. In 1911 and 1912 her and two sons were listed as students during the summer sessions at Cornell for those years.
Cautley strongly identifies as a Southern woman. This is evident because she was an officer for at least 6 years (known) for the New York division of the United Daughters of Confederacy.
She was highly educated and mentioned in one of her letters to the editor of the New York Times that she studied in Northern Italy at one point in her life.