Charlotte Baker, daughter of Thomas Ellis and Karle Wilson Baker, was born August 31, 1910 in Nacogdoches, Texas. She attended Stephen F. Austin State University from 1925 to 1926, and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1929. In 1930 she obtained a Master of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught art at public schools in Kilgore, Texas from 1931 to 1934; at Ball State College in Muncie, Indiana from 1934 to 1935; and at Texas College of Arts and Industries in Kingsville, Texas from 1940 to 1942. She married Roger Montgomery, an attorney, in 1942. From 1944 to 1947 she was a gallery docent for the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. In 1950 she became a full-time writer-illustrator.

Ms. Montgomery's writings, published under her maiden name, include two adult novels, A Sombrero for Miss Brown (1941) and House of the Roses (1942), and numerous juvenile works, many with humanitarian themes. She received the Texas Institute of Letters Cokesbury Award for Magic for Mary M in 1953 and for The Best of Friends in 1966. In 1972 Cockleburr Quarters received first prize at the Book World Children's Spring Book Festival, the University of Wisconsin Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the University of Minnesota Kerlan Collection Award, as well as a nomination for the Newbury Award.

In 1959 Mrs. Montgomery and her husband, Roger, were instrumental in organizing the Humane Society of Nacogdoches County, which inspired the formation of similar groups in East Texas. Participation in the worldwide humane movement followed. Mrs. Montgomery's pioneer humane work has been honored by the Dallas Society for Animal Protection, The Nacogdoches Branch of the American Association of University Women and the Humane Society of the United States. Active in promoting humane education through her newspaper column "Noah's Notebook" and programs in East Texas schools, Ms. Montgomery was named Humanitarian of the Year by the Society for Animal Protection for 1960-1961, received a Humane Society of the United States certificate of appreciation in 1969, and received the Joseph Wood Krutch Medal of the Humane Society of the United States in 1983. She was inducted into the Nacogdoches Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.