Eleanor (Nelly, as she wrote it, or Nellie) Lytle Kinzie Gordon was born in Chicago June 18, 1835. She was the "daughter of John A. [sic] and Juliette (Magill) Kinzie." Eleanor Lytle Kinzie married Mr. William Washington Gordon II. Gordon rose to the rank of Captain in the Confederate army during the Civil War. and was given the rank of Brigadier General in 1898 (Spanish/American War) when he volunteered for the U.S. Army at the request of President McKinley. He was appointed to the Puerto Rico Peace Commission. After their marriage, they lived in his home city of Savannah, GA, in what now is known as the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace (Low being the founder of the Girl Scouts, 1912). Mary Willliams Blatchford apparently was a friend from her younger days, during her first twenty-two years in Chicago, 1835-1857. By 1861 and the opening of hostilities between the Union and the Confederacy keeping up old friendships across the Mason-Dixon line would have been difficult. These two letters apparently represent a re-kindling of this old amity between the women over a half century after Gordon had left Chicago. But the warmth of Gordon's letters to her old friend is palpable.
Eleanor Kinzie Gordon published in 1910 apparently at her home in Savannah, Georgia, John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago--A Sketch: http://archive.org/details/johnkinziefather00gord .
Nelly Gordon's first letter, to her old Chicago friend Mrs. Blatchford, perhaps of early July 1910, is a response to a "thank you" note for a copy of her 1910 sketch of Gordon's grandfather, John Kinzie or McKenzie (1763-1828), father of John H. Kinzie (1803-1868). Mrs. Gordon asks Mrs. Blatchford to report to Mr. Blatchford (a founder of the Newberry Library) that she has more copies of her privately-produced 1910 book.
The second letter, dated July 27, 1910, is written in response to receiving a group of photos of the Blatchfords from Mary, and she also sends them a copy of her collection of poems in memory of a deceased daughter, Sarah Alice Gordon (b. 1863).
Another daughter of Mrs. Gordon's, Juliette Gordon Low, was the founder of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. The Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace museum, Savannah, is the Gordon home near Low's later home that also served as the first Girls Scouts headquarters. The the 1910 sketch of John Kinzie, mentioned in the letters, and the subsequent 1914 second edition of the Juliette (Mrs. John H.) Kinzie account of the Battle of Fort Dearborn with its appended family history both served to deal with the issue of the legitimacy of the children of the John Kinzie second "marriage" to Eleanor McKillip, notably Mrs. Gordon and also by 1914 her increasingly high-profile daughter, Juliette ("Daisy") Gordon Low (1860-1927).
The two letters were purchased ca. 1988-90, at the book sale of the Newberry Library.
Daughter of R. Douglas and Harriet (McClure) Stuart
Wife of Augustin S. Hart Jr.
Mother of 3 Children Kitty (Margaret), Chip, and Heather
Sylvia Shaw Judson was the second daughter of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926) and poet, Frances Wells Shaw (1872-1937). She was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a home her father designed and built in Lake Forest, Illinois, which he called Ragdale. Judson would later move back to Ragdale with her family in 1942 and build a studio on the grounds.
With a strong interest in sculpture, Judson graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918. While there she studied under sculptor Albin Polasek. She then studied under Antoine Bourdelle in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1921, Judson married Clay Judson. They had their first child, Alice, in 1922. Their second child, Clay Jr., was born in 1926.
Judson joined the Quaker Church in 1949, later creating a work depicting a Quaker martyr, "Monument to Mary Dyer," in 1958. Judson’s husband Clay died in 1960. She remarried in 1963 to Sidney Gatter Haskins. That same year, Judson traveled to Cairo, Egypt to teach sculpture classes at the American University there.
During her lifetime Judson published two books, "The Quiet Eye" (1954) and "For Gardens and Other Places: The Sculpture of Sylvia Shaw" (1967).
A great deal of Judson’s sculptures depict children or animals; today many reside in outdoor public spaces or private gardens. Notably, Judson's sculpture, "Little Gardener," is displayed in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden at the White House. Judson’s work has been exhibited at numerous locations including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Illinois State Museum, the Chicago Public Library, the Sculpture Center of New York, and Lake Forest College.
Judson has received a number of awards and honors during her lifetime. Her statue "Little Gardener" was awarded the Logan Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929. She won another award from the Institute in 1947, the Clyde Carr Prize. In 1949 she received the Purchase Prize at the Philadelphia Museum's International Sculpture Show. In 1952, she was given an honorary Doctorate of Sculpture from Lake Forest College. Judson served as president of the Chicago Public School Art Society from 1948-1950 and the vice-president of the women’s board at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1953-1954.
Judson died in 1978. Her work has made a revival over the past 30 years due to the publication of the book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" in 1994 which depicts her statue, "Bird Girl" (1936) on its cover. The film adaptation of the book also featured this statue.
Notable poet and Ragdale Foundation founder and first president Alice Judson (Ryerson) Hayes, 1922-2006, was the daughter of Clay Judson and the sculptor Sylvia Shaw Judson, 1897-1978. Sylvia in turn was the second of three daughters of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, 1869-1926, and poet Frances Wells Shaw,1872-1938. Alice spent many summers as a child at her mother's parents' summer place in Lake Forest, Ragdale, designed by Howard Shaw 1897 and subsequently.
Hayes married Ned (Edward L., Jr.) Ryerson in 1941 and raised a family (Susan Moon, Nora Ryerson, Mitchell Ryerson, Francie Shaw) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She earned there a doctorate in education. In 1976, as her mother who had inherited the Shaw family Ragdale house and one-third of the grounds in 1938 prepared to retire to Philadelphia, Alice moved to Ragdale and launched the Ragdale Foundation as an artists' community on the model of Yaddo and McDowell on the east coast. A decade later she donated the house and seven acres of grounds to the City of Lake Forest, with the Ragdale Foundation and its residency programs for artists remaining a tenant. She continued as president until 1992 and on the board of trustees until 1994.
She retained a cabin on adjacent property through her lifetime where she continued to summer with her husband after 1981 Albert Hayes, living with him in Hyde Park winters, eventually at Montgomery Place (1991 on). She also was a summer visitor annually after 1947 at Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, where in later years she loved entertaining her large family and many grandchildren. Albert Hayes was a Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Alice was a member of the Friends Meeting in Lake Forest, which had been incubated in Sylvia Shaw's former studio cabin, later Alice's summer place.
Since its founding in 1976 and the donation of the Ragdale property to the City in 1986, the Ragdale Foundation has grown into the oldest midwestern artists' community, the fourth oldest nationally, and one of the largest in the region. It has hosted many young writers and artists who have become major figures, including Jane Hamilton, Jackie Michard, Alex Kotlowitz, and Audrey Niffenigger. It normally houses twelve artists and writers at a time, with five writers in the Ragdale house. The house underwent an Historic Property Report recently and is beginning in 2010 a major restoration.
This writer was told in the mid 1990s by former Ragdale Foundation director Michael Wilkerson that the quality of Hayes' poetry was high enough to have made her a major national voice if she had begun earlier in life and had built up a larger body of work. A good collection of her poems is New and Selected Poems, Spoon River Press, 1987. A decade later her Journal of the Lake: Excerpts from a Seventieth Year, Open Books, 1997, was a substantial addition to her body of work. She was a superb teacher of the art of writing poetry, with exercises that made such effort accessible to many. But her work, though represented with a smaller than normal volume of good examples, deserves to be considered a significant contribution. In her work supporting the creativity of others she did so as one who was capable of the best herself, even in the midst of a life filled with other activities.
***With much of this collection focusing on Riverside Farm, the biographical history thus focuses on the founder of this farm, Francis Arnold Hoffman.
Francis Arnold Hoffman was born in Prussia to Frederick William and Wilhelmina Hoffman. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 18. Soon after arriving in the United States Hoffman took a job as a teacher for a Lutheran congregation in Dunkley’s Grove, Illinois. As the congregation did not have a clergyman at the time, he also conducted services. Enjoying this work, Hoffman became ordained and started work as a pastor.
Hoffman was married in 1844 to Cynthia Gilbert. The couple had several children.
In 1851, due to health issues, Hoffman changed career paths, moving to Chicago to study law and real estate. This eventually led him into banking, the industry in which he worked from 1854-1861.
Hoffman was also active in politics. In 1853 he was elected as a member of city council and in 1860 was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Hoffman also wrote and edited a variety of articles for largely German publications throughout his life. He wrote about a multitude of topics, but much of his writing focused on agriculture. His writing was often completed under the pen name, Hans Buschbauer.
In 1875, upon retirement, Hoffman purchased and moved to a farm in Jefferson, Wisconsin, which he named Riverside Farm.
Hoffman was part of a number of organizations throughout his life, including a member of the school board in Dunkley’s Grove, president of the Board of Chicago Underwriters and Deutsches Haus president.