Connie Converse born August 3, 1924

Elizabeth Eaton Converse (born August 3, 1924 – disappeared August 10, 1974) was an American singer-songwriter, best known under her professional name Connie Converse. A mysterious and deeply fascinating figure, she pursued her music in obscurity before vanishing completely from the face of the earth. 

Converse was born Elizabeth Eaton Converse in Laconia, New Hampshire in 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. Converse attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian and won eight academic awards, including an academic scholarship to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Though Connie had not shown much interest in instruments since abandoning her violin lessons in middle school, she began to teach herself guitar.

After two years' study, she left Mount Holyoke and moved to New York City, where she worked for the Academy Photo Offset printing house in New York's Flatiron District. She first lived in Greenwich Village, then in Hell's Kitchen and Harlem. She started calling herself Connie, a nickname she had acquired in New York. She began writing and recording her own songs, often plaintively beautiful storytelling folk songs recorded in her small apartment or by friends. She began smoking and drinking during this time, behaviours contrary to her religious upbringing. Possibly as a result, her parents rejected her music career. 

                                       

In 1954, Converse was encouraged by a friend to perform at a music salon hosted by the graphic artist and audio enthusiast Gene Deitch, who recorded the performance. Converse's only known public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on The Morning Show on CBS with Walter Cronkite, which Deitch had helped to arrange (unfortunately a recording of that appearance no longer exists). In 1956, she recorded an album for her brother Philip, Musicks (Volumes I and II). By 1961, Converse had grown frustrated trying to sell her music in New York. That year, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her brother was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Converse all but abandoned her musical interests, instead she worked in a secretarial job, and then as a writer for and managing editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1963. She played music for friends at parties, but not much more besides that. 

Around 1968–69, whist at the Institute of Pacific Affairs, Converse wrote a memo as a white member of People Against Racism, but lost her job when the institute landed in the cross hairs of the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Her family noted that Connie relied more heavily on smoking and drinking towards the end of her time living in Michigan. 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. This affected her deeply and her life seemed to hold no purpose or interest for her. After she suffered a nervous breakdown her 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 according to her brother. 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. Converse was expected to join an annual family trip to a lake, but by the time the letters were delivered, she had packed her belongings in her Volkswagen Beetle and driven away, never to be heard from again.

The events of her life following her disappearance remain unknown. Several years after she left, someone told her brother that they had seen a phone book listing for "Elizabeth Converse" in either Kansas or Oklahoma, but he never pursued the lead. About ten years after she disappeared, the family hired a private investigator in hopes of finding her. The investigator told them that even if he did find her, it was her right to disappear and he could not bring her back. After that, her family respected her decision to leave, and ceased looking for her.

In January 2004, her music was offered a public resurgence when engineer Gene Deitch played a then 50-year-old recording of her song "One by One" when he guested on New York music historian David Garland's radio show Spinning on Air. The song caught the ears of Dan Dzula and David Herman, who were moved to meet with Deitch and go through his archive to assemble a collection of her never-released songs. This collection materialized in 2009 as How Sad, How Lovely, a collection of 17 songs taken from various recordings that friends, family, and other Converse associates had preserved over the years. Her music finally reaching a broader audience, her uniquely intelligent maverick songs began to have an influence on a newer generation of folk and indie artists.

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)