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- John Ernest Bechdolt was born in Mankato, Minnesota, the county seat of Blue Earth County. He was the youngest child of Adolph Frederick and Jean Ritchie Bechdolt. By the turn of the twentieth century his family was living in Seattle, Washington, where his now widowed father taught at a university. The writer Frederic R. Bechdolt (1873-1950) was his older brother, followed by two sisters, Matilda (1876) and Margaret (1878).
Bechdolt was a prolific writer who began as a newspaperman in Seattle and Kansas City. He is credited, often as Jack Bechdolt, as the author of some six thousand short stories for mostly young readers.
Bechdolt's first wife was Mabel Claire (Glasier) of Aberdeen, Washington. She was a well known writer on women's issues and a successful sculptor and water color artist. She passed away at the age of 43 in New York City. His second wife was also a writer. Decie Merwin was a popular Kentucky author and illustrator of children's books. She and her husband collaborated on a number of books, including "John's Dragon" (1937) and "Dulcie or Half a Yard of Linsey-Woolsey" (1943). Decie passed away at around the age of 67 at her brother's home in Knoxville, Tennessee.
John Ernest Bechdolt died after a long struggle with heart disease on December 28, 1954 at the Pinebluff Sanitarium in Pinebluff, North Carolina.