Four years later, at age 18, endeavoring to further her education, she discovered she could attend Girls' High School in Brooklyn during the day while, at the same time, work a night job in Manhattan.

At this point in her life, she was compelled to quit school by her mother and to go to work to support the family. Smith attended Public School 49 through fourth grade, then transferred to PS 18, which she disliked, before wangling her way into out-of-district PS 23 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where she finished eighth grade. 'I knew then,' she was reported as saying, 'that I would write a book one day.' She made great use of the then-new public library near her home on Leonard Street, and at age 11, had two poems published in a school publication. Īs a child, Smith developed an early passion for the written word, and at age eight she received an A for a school composition. It was the Grand Street tenement that served as the setting for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. When she was four, they were living at 227 Stagg Street, and would move several times to various tenements on Montrose Avenue and Hopkins Street before settling in a tenement on the top floor of 702 Grand Street. At the time of her birth the family was living at 207 Ewen Street (now Manhattan Avenue). She had a younger brother, William, and a younger sister, Regina. Wehner, a waiter, and Katherine (or Catherine) Hummel. Smith was born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner on December 15, 1896, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York to first-generation German-Americans John C. Betty Smith (born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner Decem– January 17, 1972) was an American playwright and novelist, who wrote the 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

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