Peggy Pond Church

Margaret Hallett Pond (December 1, 1903 – October 23, 1986), known under the pen name Peggy Pond Church, was an American author and poet. She was known as "one of the American west's major poets" and was compared to poet Witter Bynner.

Born in New Mexico, her family had to return to her grandfather's home city of Detroit after a flood destroyed her father's under-construction school when she was a baby. She grew up in the area of Three Mile Lake and the family moved back to New Mexico when she was nine years old. Her father established a new school named the Los Alamos Ranch School, which she returned to after obtaining a university degree. Her teenage years would see her begin an interest in poetry and publish several prize winning pieces even as young as twelve years old

Marrying a teacher at the school, Fermor Spencer Church, soon after returning to work at the Ranch School, she worked on and published both poetry and writing pieces throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By the end of the 1930s, Church's family settled in Los Alamos while continuing to work at the Ranch School, where she met and befriended restaurateur Edith Warner.

The creation of the Manhattan Project and closing of Los Alamos to residents, along with her personal aversion to the work being done on the project, would result in Church becoming a lifelong pacifist and supporter of the anti-violence Quaker movement. Moving several more times throughout the 1940s, the family once again settled and permanently resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Church would continue to publish her work until her death in 1986.

Childhood and education She was born as Margaret Hallett Pond on December 1, 1903, to Ashley Pond Jr. and Hazel Hallett Pond in Valmora, New Mexico, The family moved back to her grandfather's home in Detroit after a massive flood in October 1904 destroyed the school her father was in the process of building. She grew up in the nature of Three Mile Lake, but the family ended up making several home moves after the death of her grandfather. They went to California and then to Roswell, New Mexico

Church attended Santa Fe High School in addition to separate boarding schools in California and Connecticut, where she began studying and publishing poetry. Throughout the 1920s, she struggled with depression and raising her children left her with little writing time. As a joint request from painter Gustave Baumann, however, she did produce a series of poems titled "New Mexico Santos" that was meant to go alongside Baumann's woodblock prints, though neither of the two's work would be published. To help with her writing, a "poem cabin" was constructed in the 1930s to give Church a space to work. Church's 1976 poetry book New & Selected Poems was chosen as a finalist for the 1976 Pushcart Prize as one of the best books published through American small presses. The New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence and Achievements in the Arts was presented to her in 1984.

A literary biography of Church's life was released by Sharon Snyder in 2011 as a publication of the Los Alamos Historical Society that was titled At Home on the Slopes of Mountains: The Story of Peggy Pond Church.

Personal life Church first met Fermor Spencer Church in the summer of 1923 when he arrived to teach at the Los Alamos Ranch School. They were married in June 1924 and spent their honeymoon at Camp May on the nearby mountain. In her writings, she said that her relationship and marriage with Fermor was not one of love, but of companionship, that his personality was "a quiet harbor" that attracted her. They had three children together.