Elliott Donnelley was a third generation Chicago printer (R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company) who lived in Lake Forest from his boyhood until his death in 1975. He had a life-long enthusiasm for trains, and after studying at Dartmouth College he went into the railroad modeling business, for amateur model makers in the early 1930s. Donnelley in 1933 took over American Model Engineers, Inc. Under the corporate identity of Scale-Models, Inc. the firm created “Scale-Craft working models,” according to an ca. 1938 brochure, and his renamed Scale-Craft brand operated in Chicago, Libertyville and Round Lake until the 1950s, when the firm was sold and moved to Michigan. The model kits came with large-scaled plans with instructions for assembly and placing custom signage.
Elliott’s parents were Laura and Thomas Elliott (T.E.) Donnelley, who built their Clinola estate and country home on Green Bay Road in 1911. Second-generation, Yale-educated T.E. Donnelley grew the family business substantially from the 1890s well into the twentieth century. He also launched in 1903 the annual holiday-time gift books, the Lakeside Classics, for clients, employees and friends. In his early adult and married years Elliott Donnelley and his spouse, Ann Steinwedell Donnelley (Hardy), lived in various small houses in Lake Forest on Wildwood and Atteridge Roads. In 1934 The Donnelleys built a home, designed by architects Frazier & Raftery, on Ridge Lane in Lake Forest, originally with a train room in the basement. Donnelley’s model train set-up later moved to the nearby basement of Lake Forest’s City Hall.
Donnelley was a trustee of Lake Forest College beginning in 1942, leading to a new commitment to the College among local estate families over the next three decades. (See “Back on Track with Elliott Donnelley” in 30 Miles North…, the College’s history, 2000, p. [145]; see also the photo on p. 135.) He served as chairman of the College’s Board of Trustees from 1967 to 1971, and played key roles in the building of two major structures on campus, the Donnelley Library (1964-65, since 2004 the expanded and renovated Donnelley and Lee Library) and the Sports Center (1968). Donnelley also donated landmark rare books to the library and also funds for such purchases on an annual basis in t he 1970s. He played a crucial role in the difficult late 1960s period in student participation on campus, and personally led face-to-face, all-hours negotiations with students to resolve issues in that dynamic environment. During the interim between College presidents in 1969-70 Donnelley was active in working with troubled students, “sentenced” to Saturday mornings working with the chairman on the trains on his estate. At the end of such work sessions where nothing was said about the occasion of the visit, Donnelley is reported to have said in his characteristic stutter, “Now, you-r-‘re g-go-ing to try harder t-to g-get along t-this w-week, aren’t y-you?” His recidivism rate was remarkably low. In the 1970s he was awarded a special honorary degree by the College, and in the last Commencement Week before his death he and Mrs. Donnelley hosted all of the graduating seniors at his home for a barbecue supper and a chance to ride the trains with himself at the engine controls.
Chicago native Elizabeth T. Lunn was born Elizabeth Teter. She was a professor of Biology at Lake Forest College beginning as a graduate assistant there in 1929. She worked her way up to Department Head from 1954-1964. Lunn retired in 1970.
Lunn received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1925 and her M.A. (1932) and Ph.D. (1939) from Northwestern University. She also studied for two years at the University of Chicago. Lunn married Richard S. Lunn in 1937 in Massachusetts.
During a decade (1935-1946) away from teaching at Lake Forest College, Lunn worked as a chemist in a testing laboratory for an oil company from 1942-1944 and a clerk for the United States Army Corps of Engineers from 1944-1945.
Lunn gave many talks and lectures, as well as conducting workshops throughout her career. Lunn co-authored "A Laboratory Manual for General Biology" and wrote a book titled "Plants of Illinois Dunesland" in 1982.
Lunn was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Environmental Control Commission and Sigma Xi. She also served as secretary/treasurer and later president of the American Association of University Professors, national and regional director of Beta, Beta, Beta, president of the Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society and on the Board of Directors of the Lake County Tuberculosis Association.
Lucy Rumsey Holt was born in Chicago, Illinois to Israel and Mary Rumsey. She was married in 1895 to William Arthur Holt. The couple had four children, Jeanette, Alfred, Mary Eleanor and Donald.
Joseph Medill Patterson (1879-1946) was the grandson of both Chicago Tribune publisher Joseph Medill and the Rev. Robert W. Patterson, long-time pastor of Chicago's Second Presbyterian Church and a founder of Lake Forest, Illinois and of educational institutions now known as Lake Forest College and Lake Foreest Academy.
Patterson attended Groton with his cousin Berty McCormick and Yale, and then both returned to Chicago by ca. 1900 and engaged in civic affairs, Patterson adopting Socialism as a cause for equalizing economic distribution while Berty led the committee that built Chicago's Sanitary canal, reversing the flow of the Chicago River to the Mississippi River system. Patterson also wrote articles on his reformist views, attacking treatment of department store women workers (his father in law was affiliated with Marshall Field & Co.), and by 1906 pointing out the enormity of Marshall Field's will. By 1908 he was publishing a novel, Little Brother of the Rich, in the same vein, while living with his growing family on a farm west of Lake Forest (now Vernon Hills), with his spouse Alice Higinbotham Patterson. His writing on early film (Saturday Evening Post, 1907) is among the earliest critical efforts on the medium. He wrote one-act and full-length plays, the Fifth Estate being one of the latter. H.L. Menchen in 1917 listed him among the writers of Chicago Literary Renaissance.
Medill had two daughters, one of whom (Elinor) married Robert W. Patterson, Jr., who became after Medill's death publisher of the Chicago Tribune. When the younger Patterson died in 1910, J. M. Patterson and his cousin, Robert R.(Berty) McCormick (a son of the other Medill daughter), took over directing the Tribune Company. They split the duties (one on one month, and the other the next, etc.). Patterson also went off on reporting trips (Pancho Villa, 1915, war-town western Europe in 1915, etc.)., and then both served in the U.S. Army after this country entered the hostilities formally in April 1917.
Returning in 1919 J. M. Patterson had been taken with the idea of the tabloid paper in London, created by Lord Beaverbrook, and the two decided that Patterson should go to New York to launch the new venture.
By 1930 Patterson was living on a new estate in Ossining, NY, on the Hudson, having separated informally from his spouse. Until then he went back and forth from Chicago to New York.
Starting in the 1910s Patterson was a pioneer in the creation of newspaper comic strips. He nurtured the creators, critiqued their work, etc. His own earlier literary and dramatic work helped him understand communicating with an audience to convey a story or story line.
Patterson worked to distribute the strips by the Tribune Syndicate, and they became major forces for selling newspapers in a highly competitive, even cut-throat, field at that time. This sub-collection documents some of rich participation in a major American genre that was a precursor of later innovations.