Savannah Poet: Elfrida Derenne Barrow

The Derenne family heritage goes back to the good ship Anne and one of the most vaunted of Savannah’s early settlers, Noble Jones. One of the remarkable women of Savannah was from this family Elfrida Derenne Barrow. She was a sixth generation Georgian. She was in fact born in Philadelphia in 1884.Her family moved to Texas and then to the French Atlantic coast at Biarritz. At Biarritz she would begin her cultural education learning French. Although she eventually attended A New York finishing school she was proud of the self-education she would provide herself.
What would eventually bring this remarkable woman to Savannah would be her marriage to Dr. Craig Barrow of Athens. They would hold their wedding ceremony at Noble Jones colonial home and her family estate, Wormsloe. In 1938 Wormsloe would become her home after living in downtown Savannah for many years
While she was a woman of many passions poetry was her greatest. In 1923 she would be one of the leaders and ‘guiding lights’ in the founding of Poetry Society of Georgia. She became a successful poet in her own right. Some of Barrow's works were published, in the vaunted 'Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.' Below are two poems she wrote:
·         GARDEN S END
 Within the radius
 Of accustomed eyes
 I find the usual garden's end.
 Without surprise
 I comprehend
 Its man-devised security
 I see it all,
 From brambled hedge
 To patterned wall.
 But today
 The gate swings out
 Into the far away,
 Where, from earth-lulled seedlings
 Dreamily uncurled,
 Spring has made a garden of the world.
 And distance,
 Freed from measurement,
 Blows outward to a sky's uncharted line,
 Where, unfurled
 Along the edges of my visioned world,
 It spreads to new dimensions
 Through the scheme
 Of some invisible design.
 
 Perhaps
 Beyond that undeciphered bend
 Waits another garden's end
 Another gate
 Swings open to another spring.
 This is an estimate
 That blinds my reckoning.
 
 EARTH CHANGE
 Snow, and low-swept evergreens;
 And soil heavy with rain,
 Where grey-pronged orchard trees,
 Shivering, bloom again.
 Crusted clay and russet leaf,
 Loam, and a flowering bush;
 And dust, with sturdy weeds
 Matted in the underbrush.
 As each day zigzags into night,
 And life keeps circling by
 Overhead, in ageless blue,
 Endures the sky
 
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​​Another passion of hers was history. She became one of the first women to join the Georgia Historical Society. She served as the society’s curator in the tradition of her grandfather, father and brother. She also submitted two articles to the Society's journal, The Georgia Historical Quarterly She joined the Colonial Dames of America
​She would write two books for Savannah’s bicentennial. One was Anchored Yesterdays: The Log Book of Savannah's Voyage Across a Savannah Century, in Ten Watches.the other she did under the auspices of the Colonial Dames, Georgia: A Pageant of Years.
​One of her greatest deeds was the creation of the Wormsloe Foundation in 1951. The foundations principal activity was the publishing of historical works through the University of Georgia Press. She also gave 750 acres of the Wormsloe estate to the foundation which is now Wormsloe State Park. ​
Elfrida passed away in 1970. Her daughter Muriel Barrow Bell would follow in her creative steps becoming a photographer and historian.

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Entrance to Wormsloe State Park