Madeline Ashton taught Modern Languages at Lake Forest College.
The Caxton Club, located in Chicago, was founded in 1895. It is a private social organization and bibliophilic society bringing people together from different backgrounds who have a communal love of books and literary study. The club was named after William Caxton, a noted printer during the fifteenth century.
While the club did not allow female membership until 1976, it has gone on to have three female presidents. The club holds dinner and lunch programs, sponsors various events and exhibitions, and publishes books and a monthly newsletter, the Caxtonian.
Cameron Brown was born in Chicago to George and Irene (nee Larmon) Brown. He graduated from the University of Illinois. Brown fought in World War II, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the army. After the war, Brown went on to have a career in the reinsurance business. Brown loved to travel and visited over 200 countries in his lifetime.
Brown had a wife, Jean, two daughters, Sophie and Debrah, one son, Reid, and three stepdaughters, Phyllis, Paula and Leila.
Brown served on the board of the National Association of Independent Insurers and was the head of Lloyd's Brokers Association in the United States, as well as being President of Planned Parenthood of Chicago.
The Foundation for Architecture and Landscape Architecture (FALA) was a summer program for architecture training for graduates. Students lived at Lake Forest College during the program, which existed from 1926-1931. The students learned from master architects, examined local estates, and collaborated on drawings. These drawings were housed at Lake Forest College in storage in 1935 and found 50 years later.
Mary Reynolds Aldis, wife of Chicago developer Arthur Aldis, wrote one-act plays, poetry, and painted in watercolor. Born in Chicago and educated at St. Mary’s School in Knoxville, IL, she married her husband in 1892. After moving to Lake Forest in 1902, she occupied an estate on the southeast corner of Deerpath Rd and Green Bay Rd. She and her husband added and then converted a cottage on their property into an amateur playhouse which opened on June 11, 1911.
The Aldises were considered pioneers in amateur and community theater in Chicago. Mary’s Lake Forest summer playhouse ran full seasons until 1915 and ended by 1920. The playhouse put on plays by both amateur and professional playwrights and reflected Mary’s tastes as a writer, translator, and dramatist.
Aldis worked to support women's rights and other progressive causes. She, at times, lived independently from her husband and died in 1949 in Milwaukee.
First Child of James G.K. McClure Sr. and Phebe Ann McClure (Dixon)
Married to Dumount Clarke
First Child of James G.K. and Phebe Ann (Dixon) McClure
Married to Rev. Dumont Clarke
Mother of 4 Children: Dumont Jr. (Montie) Clarke, Phebe Ann Clarke (later Mrs. Bardette Gibson Lewis Jr.), James "Jamie" McClure Clarke, and Cornelia Clarke
Gordon Adamson died at the age of 71 on January 21, 1986. He was a former vice president of Baldwin-United Corp. (Cincinnati), and prior to that secretary and assistant treasurer of the Bowman Dairy Co. His spouse was Emily Norcross Adamson, daughter of Dr. Edward P. Norcross, Highland Park, and sister of Dr. Pliny Norcross, Amherst, MA. Gordon Adamson was chair of the lake Forest Symphony and on the Board of Directors in the 1980s of the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society.
Lois Cesner was the Publicity Chairman and collected newspaper clippings/minutes for the Chicago North Shore City (formerly the North Shore Alumnae) Panhellenic Association from 1959-60. This was also the year that the group was admitted to the national panhellenic sorority organization as described by Cesner in an article that is among the additional loose materials at the back of the scrapbook. She lived at 1304 Isabella, Wilmette, Illinois.
The Lake Forest Water Company began operation in 1891, pumping water from Lake Michigan up to the town and its individual home estates. George Holt, son of town founder D.R. Holt, was the president for a long term, but by the early 20th C. there were complaints about water rates, and later about water pressure.
After 1921 the City took over operation of the Water Works and service, expanding it with a bond issue in the mid 1920s and then again in 1930, following the economic expansion of Chicago. Many citizens for this reason had seasonal homes in Lake Forest. The Garden Club of Illinois, Lake Forest and Winnetka, was organized in 1912, and by 1922 the Lake Forest Garden Club was a central force for garden development locally.
Marion Musser was born in Iowa and she graduated Vassar College in 1932. In 1940, she married Glen A. Lloyd and they had three children together. Her husband died in 1975, but Marion lived three decades after his death with her remaining children (John died in 1991) and four grandchildren.
As the collection shows with its varied materials, Marion was a wordly individual who actively participated in many different communal groups and social organizations. She was the first woman to head a major arts institution in Chicago when she served as the Chairman of the Ravinia Festival. She also was interested and worked with the Chicago Symphony, The General Service Foundation, and the Board of the University of Chicago. She and her family had three residences found in Libertyville, Chicago, and New Mexico.
Carey Orr was an editorial and political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune from 1917 to his retirement as chief editorial cartoonist on January 1st, 1963. The work in this collection is all from this period of Orr's career spanning from the 1920s to 1960s. It shows his own progression as an artist, but also the changing attitudes of the world and international issues of the times.
Casey Cassius Orr was born in Ada, Ohio on January 17, 1890 to Cassius Perry Orr and Martha (Rinehart) Orr. In his early years, he expressed a true desire to draw, but in keeping with the wishes of his father, he first studied mathematics and mechanical engineering. Orr was also a gifted sportsman, as a semi-pro baseball pitcher, and he soon decided to follow his dream of drawing by using the funds he earned as pitcher to pay for his admission to the Chicago Academy of FIne Arts.
After his art schooling, Orr got his first newspaper position at the Chicago Examiner, but he soon joined the Nashville Tennessean Newspaper as a full-time editorial cartoonist. He returned to the city of Chicago by 1917 and after some negotiations (see Folder 1/Patterson Correspondence of the collection), he was able to join the Tribune, where the editorial role was dominated by the older and high-profile cartoonist John T. McCutcheon.
But even at the outset Orr aspired to succeed McCutcheon even if in the distant future. He was hired in the year that the U.S. entered World War I, when the peripatetic McCutcheon was away, and after McCutcheon returned, Orr was holding the position of the second cartoonist with a small shadow comic strip. By covering the two months annually that McCutcheon was off, Orr continued to grow as a cartoonist and when McCutcheon retired in the 1940s, Orr did succeed him.
Orr and Chicago Tribune were thus engaged in what became a 46-year long working relationship that earned Orr the title as a significant visual crusader of many of the issues and conflicts within and beyond American borders spanning two World Wars.
In 1961, Orr won the Pulitzer Prize for one of his cartoons (one on the threat of Communism in newly independent Africa), the first won by the Tribune since 1936. He also won Freedom Foundation awards in the 1950s and a gold medal from the U.S. for his contributions during World War I. His work reached and described many prominent figures of history and cultural life. People like Queen Elizabeth II and President Harry Truman even have copies of Orr's work in their own library collections.
Orr was on the televsion program "This Is Your Life" and acted as a serious teacher to many aspiring cartoonists throughout his career. In 1914, Orr married Cherry Maud Kindel, and they had two daughters, Dorothy Jane and Cherry Sue. The family lived in and near Wilmette, Illinois until Orr's death on May 16th, 1967.
Overall, this small collection captures Orr's great ability to compress a complex argument about economics or politics into a concise, quickly visible statement of a position. His characters were hardly ever mean (such as Adlai Stevenson fishing for the 1960 Democratic nomination for the presdiency), but they were pointed.