Jessie Estell Muse

Jessie Estell Muse was born in 1886 in New York and moved to New Haven with her family when she was three years old. Her father, Richard H. Muse, was a native of North Carolina; from at least 1890 until his death in 1911, he was employed as a janitor in New Haven. At least part of that time, he worked for the Delta Psi Society at Yale. Her mother, Julia Pennington Gibbs, worked as a dressmaker and corsetiere (corset-maker); she was the daughter of Jonathan C. Gibbs, an abolitionist and the secretary of state in Florida during Reconstruction. The family lived at 169 Bassett Street in New Haven.

Jessie Muse was a graduate of the Shelton Avenue School and New Haven High School (now Hillhouse High School). She entered the New Haven State Normal School (a predecessor of Southern Connecticut State University) in 1904, and graduated in 1906. She attended the Yale School of Music from 1909 to 1913. A letter from her sister, Victoria Josephine Muse, in her Yale alumni file indicates that she completed one of the School of Music's three-year programs in theory or practice in 1912.

Jessie Muse died in 1918. Her sister also attended the Yale School of Music, earning a Certificate of Proficiency in the Theory of Music in 1912. Another sister, Florence A. Muse Laws, graduated from the New York Barber College. Her brother, Richard I. Muse, a World War I veteran, received the Croix de Guerre for bravery.