Marie Louise Malloy, more commonly known as Josh Wink was born in Baltimore in the year of 1858. She was she daughter of John and Frances (Sollers) Malloy. She is of Irish decent, her grandparents emigrated to America in the early 1800’s. Louise as a young girl always dreamed of a career in literature and attended school at the convent of the Visitation. In December of 1889 Malloy’s dream came true when she was offered a job at the Baltimore American.
Malloy… or should I say “Wink” was a columnist for the Baltimore American for well over 20 years. Louise “specialized in women’s interests, did editorial and feature work, and was a dramatic editor.” She was the first newspaperwoman in Maryland. She wrote short stories, essays, dramas, and poems that usually included a comedic edge. Some of the columns Malloy wrote consistently for the Baltimore American that I have come across were titled “Laughs and The World Laughs with you” and “Notes and Notions”. Here she included multiple lighthearted poems with deeper underlying meanings. I believe that these larger meanings could only be seen by intelligent people reading deeper into the poems, to the average joe these works were just good for a laugh. I mean that’s what a daily humor column is for right?
The way to a woman’s heart may be slightly strenuous, but the road coming from it is the hardest to travel.”
Along with all these amazing accomplishments Malloy’s “efforts led to the establishment of Juvenile Court in Baltimore and also resulted in improvements in the Fire Department.” I do not know much about this information so I am still trying to unearth more facts.
I thoroughly enjoy reading her work. I appreciate comedy and her stuff let me tell you is genuinely “lol” worthy. She is super relatable and I always think it’s ironic that topics she speaks of in her column relate so much to life today. I mean you really could place some of her works in newspapers today and get good feedback from readers. She was popular back then and I understand all of the hype.
Mary Spear Nicholas Tiernan was born on February 14, 1835. Or was it 1836? Was her birthday even in February? Wikipedia thinks so, but the Encyclopedia of Virginia places her birth somewhere in 1836. Mrs. Tiernan’s early life is particularly difficult to pin down. As a charter member of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore and an author whose novels are still available for purchase today, I would think more would be known about her. Unfortunately, the details are quite sparse. What I do know: She was the third wife of Charles Tiernan, a member of the State of Maryland Militia in Baltimore. She is did not have any children. Much of her early life was spent in Richmond, Virginia, where her father was a district attorney. According to a death announcement in the Baltimore Sun from January 14, 1891, her wit “brought to bear upon her literary work the advantages of a scholarly education.” This makes me assume that she did not have any sort of higher education, although I will continue to search for records that could indicate otherwise. In her life, she published short stories in Century Illustrated Magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and Scribner’s Monthly. Her death announcements in The Democratic Advocate of Westminster, MD and The Baltimore Sun state that she was 56 when she passed away from pneumonia on January 13, 1891. On the anniversaries of the club, the women would decorate her grave, along with the graves of Edgar Allen Poe and Sidney Lanier, according to The Baltimore Sun in 1899 and 1900, which indicates how highly she was respected by the other women.
Mary Spear Nicholas Tiernan. Image from Wikipedia
Her southern upbringing appeared to be quite influential in her writing; in fact, out of the seven short stories and novels I have read by her, all seven of them are set in Virginia! Each of them also centers around the Confederacy in some way or another- whether it be the inclusion of Confederate soldiers as characters or references to the Yankees in the north, her stories are set firmly in the Civil War. Her characters were described by reviewers in the November 11, 1885 edition of The Baltimore Sun as “pure and innocent” and I think that captures them perfectly. The majority of her stories center on young women and their suitors, finding an innocent love in the Virginia countryside. She was praised for her ability to make readers interested in her characters in novels like Homoselle and Suzette. I must say, this is true. Tiernan’s women are witty and interesting. A great example of this comes in Homoselle. The eponymous girl has previously expressed her disdain for her family’s British guest, Mr. Halsey. When Halsey expresses his delight after trying his first mint julep, Homoselle responds: “”The inventor of juleps,’ began Homoselle,– and as it was the first remark she volunteered, Halsey listened with interest,– ‘Like the inventor of the guillotine, is said to have fallen a victim to his own invention.’” Her comment is the perfect combination of intelligent and vaguely ominous, making even modern readers like myself get drawn into her charm and wit. Her short stories and novels are full of women who are unafraid to speak strongly despite the fact that they are also bound to societal conventions of docility.
Lucy Meacham (Kidd) Thruston was born on March 29th, 1862 in to John Meacham Kidd and Elizabeth Rebecca Adams Kidd, an old Virginia family. Being from Virginia inspired her to write works such as A Girl of Virginia (published in 1902) to which tells a story about a “loveable light spirited daughter of a professor of the University of Virginia” while giving details about the college from the point of view of those who live around it.
From “The Baltimore Sun” May 22, 1907
She moved to Baltimore when she was 12, graduated from Maryland-State Normal School at Towson (not the State Teachers’ College) and taught for a little there. She married her husband Julius Thruston who was from Baltimore on February 14th, 1887, which let’s be honest is so romantic! From a young age, Thruston has claimed to always being a “some-what romantic” and enjoyed writing. Her first publication Songs of the Chesapeake was quickly followed by her most well-known novel Mistress Brent: A Story of Lord Baltimore’s colony in 1638 in 1901, intentionally bringing together history and fiction of Maryland. This publication familiarized her name among not only Baltimoreans, but the country.
Her love and pride of being a Southern woman is seen in her other publications including Jack and His Island: A Boy’s Adventures along the Chesapeake in the War of 1812 1902, Where the Tide Comes In 1904, Called to the Field: A Story of Virginia in the Civil War 1906, and Jenifer in 1907 which takes place in the Carolina mountains. Her love for history of the South can be seen in all her publications, she even says in The Baltimore Sun, “I often feel that history often throws light on the facts of today, and that the present day in turn can throw light on the facts of history”.
In 1915 publication of The Baltimore Sun, she told of her writing short stories and articles in order to spend more time with her family. November 27, 1938 Thruston passed away after a really bad fall, leaving behind her two daughter Miss Augusta Thruston (who she lived with after the death of her husband in 1920) and Mrs. James Miller Leake who moved to Florida. She was a much loved and praised author during her time and years to follow. Although she has been seemingly left in the early 20th, she was much loved and adored for her love of the history and the South.
Image courtesy of The Baltimore Sun’s article on “WHEN GIRLS OF TODAY TAKE UP READING,” published 09.19.1915.
Over the weekend, I did some extended research on one of my favorite assigned authors – Mrs. Harriet Lummis Smith. According to a 1909 issue of The Sun, Mrs. Smith (also recognized as Mrs. William Mulligan Smith) was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts and was the daughter of Jennie Brewster Lummis and Dr. (and Reverend) Henry Lummis who had been the head of the Greek department at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin. She was also the sister of Harry Brewster Lummis and a half-sister of Charles Fletcher Lummis (who had been an author, adventurer and early advocate of multiculturalism). Charles F. Lummis’s mother had passed away at an early age, and his father (Reverend Henry Lummis at the time) remarried to Jennie Brewester (who also happened to be his teacher at the time of his father’s re-marriage who he had not established a warm rapport with. I found this to be a very interesting discovery… family drama!
Harriet Lummis Smith went on to study graduate at the University of Wisconsin after her mother and father had moved to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where she went on to become a teacher of mathematics and Latin. After receiving a letter one day from a publisher who accepted a story of hers said that she was ‘wasting [her] time teaching,’ Mrs. Smith was given a final push to officially end her teaching career and pick up writing as a full-time profession. When she departed from teaching, she took up writing “merely for amusement” (The Sun, 1915).
Some time between the catalyst that sparked her career into writing and her time living on Calvert Street in Baltimore, Mrs. Smith received her A.B. (Bachelor of Arts) degree in 1886, and went on to accept a position at David Cook Publishing Company in 1894. Her sister Katherine went on to receive her A.M. degree (Master of Arts) at Stanford University in 1890 and then went on to study at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome (now known as the American Academy in Rome). Katherine later moved to Calvert Street also and lived close to her sister Harriet. Thank goodness for the Lawrence College Alumni Records! It is difficult to place when exactly Harriet had decided to go to move to Chicago. According to the February 14th, 1909 Baltimore Sun article, she had moved from Wisconsin to Chicago for some time where she then gained more of a reputation for her short stories to McClure’s Magazine, the Youth’s Companion, the Independent, Lippincott’s, and many more. I can only assume that she joined the WLCB by 1909 and ended her time at the WLCB soon after 1915 (according to club records), which means she must have moved to Calvert Street in Baltimore by 1909 since the Baltimore Sun biographical article had been published in 1909. Filling in the puzzle pieces is quite exciting!
While browsing the Minutes, I noticed that because she was referenced by her husband’s name, she would have gone by Mrs. William Mulligan Smith (she married her husband in Wisconsin in 1905) – but the Minutes label her as Mrs. William Milligan Smith in the 1909-1910 minutes! She had sat as Chairman and Judge of an election in 1909, and her name had been labeled properly as Mulligan at this time within the Minutes. During some instances, Mrs. Smith had been a substitute as the recording secretary in the 1910-1911 Minutes, and within the 1911-1912 Minutes, she continued to be a substitute Secretary for the Minutes. At the 779th Meeting on November 13th of 1913, as active Chairman, she had stated that, “while an autobiography is a man’s picture of himself as he likes to imagine he looks, his letters really reveal himself. The simple, almost stupid, letters of certain great men sometimes give us a feeling of affection for them not called out by their profundities” (“Other People’s Letters,” 779th Meeting); I found this comment by her to be particularly amusing as she opens up the Meeting with this comment. 1915 seemed to be the liveliest time for Mrs. Smith, as she went on to review many works within the club meetings, culminating with her election as President of the WLCB at the end of the season. After 1915, references to Mrs. Harriet Lummis Smith begin to taper off. With the 832nd Meeting’s text missing, it is difficult to try to understand what happened to Mrs. Smith from 1915-1916. Because these specific minutes are currently being transcribed, I will have to halt my research on the elusive and “Conspicuous” Harriet Lummis Smith!
This past weekend, our class took a trip to the Maryland Historical Society to get a better understanding of the context that the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore was writing in.
I LOVE field trips and museums, so I was looking forward to spending the day in a historical society.
Being able to learn about what kind of world these women were writing in has allowed me to better understand what may have motivated women to be writers during this period. One of the larger exhibits in the Historical Society was dedicated to examples of needlepoint. The ability to sew was considered a very important skill for women to have, so many spent their time learning how to make needlepoint samplers. Along with the ability to sew, learning languages, such as French, was also considered a valuable educational pursuit for young women. Elizabeth Bonaparte, who is the focus of an exhibit at the historical society, had a tutor from France so that she could learn French. This interest in foreign languages can also be seen in the works of club members, like Florence Trail, who translated Italian poetry for anthologies in English. These pursuits represented what was considered culturally relevant and important for the women of the club, but in different ways. Needlepoint followed traditional gender roles as an acceptable task for women. Languages, while also traditionally acceptable, were being used by the women of the club to become more engaged in literacy practices that were often reserved for men, thus going against the cultural norms.
Picture courtesy of Jill Fury
The interest in educational advancement for women was apparent when we had the opportunities to examine some documents from the period. A course catalogue from the Lutherville Female Seminary included a list of students enrolled at the institution. I was surprised to discover that some of the students had come from as far away as Florida and Iowa. The fact that they would travel such a long distance shows that the educational opportunities for women of the period were severely lacking.
Picture courtesy of Katie Kazmierski
One of the more interesting and entertaining things that I learned about the work of women in the period came in the form of a bordello map. Women’s groups of the period worked towards social reform, promoting a more moral society with better life choices. In an effort to lead sailors to a pure moral path, they handed out maps of known bordellos near the docks where the sailors worked. Unfortunately, this plan backfired and essentially gave the sailors a map of where to find prostitutes in the city. This provided an interesting example of the work being done by women in the period, and also of how that work was received by the general public.
Picture courtesy of Jill Fury
Finally, to fully explain the title of my post, I must mention the best part of the day at the Maryland Historical Society: the stickers. I have loved stickers since I was a child (I collected them!), so getting one of the stickers that are given out for visitors brightened up my rainy day. It is now displayed proudly next to my Maryland crab sticker on my laptop.
Over the past week, our assignment for our class has been to find publications from the women in the Club. I was assigned Maud Early, Marguerite Easter, May Evans and (my personal favorite) Christine Ladd Franklin.
I was able to find published works for all of these women, but the one who sparked the most interest for me was Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin who is exclusively referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin in the minutes.
Marina touched on Mrs. Franklin in her most recent post, which was fascinating for me to read after all of her work I was able to find. Mrs. Franklin was born in 1847 and went to Vassar College. She then went on to study at Johns Hopkins and was the first woman to have finished the requirements for a Ph.D in math and logic. Unfortunately, she was not given this title until much later in her life because of Johns Hopkins’ policy on coeducation at the time.
All of Mrs. Franklin’s publications are focused on her studies of math, logic and psychology. Her ideas about color vision were revolutionary in the field of psychology and mathematics. She has published over 50 articles in various magazines and journals. That being said, on her Wikipedia page, there are only eight publications listed. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will be able to update that to include all of her works that were published.
Another issue that I have with Mrs. Franklin is that all of her work is under the name of Christine Ladd Franklin. I have even seen Ladd and Franklin hyphenated because Franklin is her married name. Yet in the meetings, she is only referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin. We talked about this in class and have decided that the Club was very strict with their procedures as one of their mottos is “consistency, thou art a jewel.” So maybe the Club wasn’t necessarily trying to stifle Mrs. Franklin and her accomplishments so much as they were trying to keep control over the small things that mattered to them. These small things were sometimes all women had control over and so I don’t blame them…that much.
In transcribing minute meetings, it is easy to get lost in the technicalities of accurate replication, distracting one from content that seems, at times, mundane. However, in my transcription of the 805th Meeting of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore held on October 27th 1914, a sentiment was put forth that piqued my interest. The meeting was conducted by the committee on poetry, led by chairman Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese, who began by reading a poem entitled “Ghosts.” However, it was not Miss Reese that brought forth this reflection, but a musing from the secretary herself that caught my eye. She wrote, “Every house where men live and die is haunted. The house not made with hands is the one we really live in. This is the modern touch, taking the place of cruder apparitions of earlier times. Our ghosts have been turned inward.”
I was immediately struck because, unlike other minutes I had encountered, the minute keeper was not simply relaying the conversation of the group, but weighing in herself. She was so moved by the topic of ghosts and apparitions that she felt it necessary to document her thoughts. It is clear that the “house not made with hands” she is referring to is the kingdom of God, quoting from 2 Corinthians 5:1. It is a religious sentiment, but perhaps a social commentary too. These minutes were taken in October of 1914, shortly after the beginning of the first world war, a time in history when the world faced the grim reality of brutal intercontinental conflict, and Americans feared their nation’s entry into the war. Death was no longer a topic easily ignored, but one in the forefront of civilian minds. Perhaps the minute keeper’s words were just a belief that religion had taken precedent over old-fashioned superstition, but maybe she was instead struck by the reality that war was raging and death looming, finding solace in her divine belief in heaven.
