Ruth Ebright Finley’s papers are located in The University of Akron Archives. Although Our Unseen Guest quickly became a classic in psychic literature, the Finleys were able to keep their involvement in the paranormal secret. In Cleveland in 1916, they played with a Ouija board and met their guide to the afterlife, a volunteer ambulance driver who had died in France the year before. In 1931, she published a biography of antebellum magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale. The Lady of Godey’s: Sarah Josepha Haleis still considered an important resource on Hale and her popular woman’s periodical.Įven as Finley continued her career as an editor, quilt expert and historian, she and her husband were exploring different aspects of reality.Īs Joan and Darby, the Finleys became chronicling their exploits in the afterlife in their 1920 book Our Unseen Guest. That book chronicled how they first got involved in the paranormal. There was a certain irony in this because Finley was a critic of the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the first lady on the pages of the Woman’s National Political Review, the periodical she edited.įinley was also an historian of sorts. Part of the movement to reawaken American interest in quilts and quilting, Finley designed the quilt given first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Building on her interest in quilts and quilting, she wrote the book, Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them. There were many dimensions to Finley’s life. She was woman’s page editor of the Cleveland Press, fiction editor of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, managing editor for the old Washington Herald, woman’s editor of the Enterprise Newspaper Association, assistant editor ofMcClure’s magazine and editor of Guide Magazine and theWoman’s National Political Review. It was while at the Cleveland Press that she met and married Emmet Finley, an editor there.įinley had a varied journalistic career after that. She was best known for her stories on the working conditions of labor women and she is credited with helping get a bill passed that was designed to benefit working women. She then went on to the oldCleveland Press. Ebright won a name for herself when managed to get an interview with the former Akronite wife of inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Instead she started her reporting career with the Beacon Journal. This was a time of sob sisters and sensational journalism. She enrolled in Oberlin in 1902 but returned to Akron the next year to go to old Buchtel College (now The University of Akron). Her father himself lived a kind of dual existence, one as a physician and one, for a time, as the postmaster of Akron.Įbright was well educated for her day. Ebright and his wife, the former Julia Ann Bissell. Ruth Ebright was born in Akron, the daughter Dr. It’s a long trip from Akron to the afterlife but was an easy one for Finley because she lived two quite separate lives. Ruth Ebright Finley, “girl reporter, sob sister, feature writer” for the Akron Beacon Journal in the early 20th century, went on to a career as an editor, a biographer, an expert on American quilts – and one of the greatest clairvoyants of the 20th century. In reporting her death, theBeacon Journal said, “Social work was her great aim in life through her efforts, happiness was left where squalor and want was found.”įrank was a member of First Church of Christ Scientist. She distributed used clothes to those in want. Her home became a kind of clearing house for used clothing for the needy.Īccording to the Beacon Journal, Frank worked under the direction of the Probate Court. Once she married Frank, she started helping the needy of the city. Before she married, Esselburn was a telephone operator staffing Akron’s first exchange. Her father was Lewis Esselburn, a Medina County merchant. She just did her relief work on her own.Ĭelia Esselburn was born near Lodi. She had no affiliation with any charitable organization or agency in the city. What made her different was how she worked. When Celia Esselburn Frank died in 1930, the Beacon Journal called her a “pioneer Akron social worker.” That seemed an apt description.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |