Effie Ella Grant Hardy

Effie Ella Grant was born in 1885 in Connecticut to Carrie Hamilton Grant and Bradford F. Grant. For part of her childhood, she lived in Worcester, Massachusetts.

She attended the Yale School of Music from 1906 to 1909, likely completing a certificate program in either music theory or in music practice in 1909. A soprano singer, Hardy received the Julia Abigail Lockwood Scholarship. She lived in New Haven with her mother, who operated a "Yale Employment Bureau" for housekeepers. She was later made an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

After Yale, she moved to Quindaro, Kansas, where she taught at Western University (since closed), likely the first Black university in the western U.S. and an institution renowned for its musical programs. She married Arthur W. Hardy, a director with the Y.M.C.A., and together they had two children. They lived in Ohio and later New Jersey, where she continued to perform professionally and teach music. In 1928, Hardy was invited by the sociologist Herbert A. Miller to present, along with her vocal students, to his classes at Ohio State University on the history of Black music.

Later in her life, Effie Grant Hardy lived in Buffalo, New York. She died on December 28, 1983, at the age of 98.