Harry Harrison Kroll was born to Darius Wesley and Caroline (Cripe) Kroll near Hartford City, Indiana on February 18, 1888. He married Nettie Heard on May 12, 1911 and the couple had three children: Harry Harrison Jr., Robert Torrey, and Danny Wesley. Kroll worked as a rural school teacher and high school principal in Alabama before earning his BS (1923) and MA (1925) from George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee. He went on to work as a Professor of English and Head of the English Department at Lincoln Memorial University (1925-1927), as a Professor of Journalism at Iowa Wesleyan College (1928-1929), and as an Associate Professor and Head of the English Department at the University of Tennessee Junior College at Martin. Kroll was also a prolific writer and produced a number of books, including The Cabin in The Cotton (1931), Three Brothers and Seven Daddies (1932), The Ghosts of Slave Driver's Bend (1937), The Keepers of the House (1940), Rogues' Company (1943), Lost Homecoming (1950), The Long Quest (1953), Barbara's Farm (1955), The Medicine Man (1955), Summer Gold (1955), and Smoldering Fire (1955). Harry Kroll retired in 1958 and died on June 11, 1967.