Don Marquis, American humorist, dramatist, and poet, was born in Walnut on July 29, 1878. In 1899 he went to Washington, D.C., where he began his career in journalism. He later worked on newspapers in Atlanta and New York City. In Atlanta he also wrote with Joel Chandler Harris for Uncle Remus' Magazine. In a column called the “Sun Dial” which he wrote for the New York Evening Sun from 1913 to 1922, he created fictional characters whose conversations and antics expressed the author's commentaries on the times. The most popular characters were Archy, a literary cockroach, and Mehitabel, rowdy queen of the alley cats. Marquis died in 1937. His principal works number more than twenty-five.