Between 1911 and 1917 she took college courses at Yankton, Bellevue, and Creighton Colleges, and the Universities of Nebraska and Virginia. She qualified for a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1917, but did not get her diploma until she paid a $15.00 diploma fee in 1924.

In 1916, she received a Teacher's Certificate to teach Virginia high schools, and taught school in Rockbridge County, Virginia, for the first 5 months of 1917. During the 1917/18 school year, she taught in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Elsé had met Clair Cameron (C.C.) Barnett while living in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1915. Elsé later moved with her family to Omaha, and then to places in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee. Clair traveled to Tennessee to marry her there in 1918.

Clair and Elsé started farming south of Lynch, Nebraska, and had a daughter, Lucille, in 1919. Poor crops and debts forced them to sell out in 1921 and move to Lincoln. There Clair found work as a bookkeeper and saved enough to pay off the debts and support new daughters Margaret (1922) and Catherine (1925). Later in 1925, they moved to a farm near Diller, Nebraska, and farmed there and near Waverly, Nebraska until 1942. Elsé apparently did most of the writing in this collection during the middle of this period, and also began using Elsie rather than Elsé as her name.

By 1943 the girls had all married and left home. In 1942 the Clair and Elsie decided to quit farming. They sold out, paid all their debts with $100 left over, and rented a house in Lincoln. Elsie got a job as a fry cook in a restaurant and Clair as a maintenance man at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Saving carefully, they were able to buy a small house and 15 acres (The Acreage) near Lincoln in 1946. They added on to it, and gradually bought and rented out other houses, providing them income for the rest of their lives.

Besides helping with farm work, even on the Acreage, and raising her daughters and keeping house, Elsé was active in the Methodist Church, and service organizations such as the Bryan Hospital Ladies Auxiliary for most of her life. She died in 1985, just short of her 91st birthday, after 67 years of marriage. Clair followed her five years later at the age of 94.