Amy Ella Blanchard (left) and Ida Waugh
Happy Pride Month!
It’s rare to find a documented same-sex partners from 100+ years ago, but I recently discovered a couple on our tree: Amy Ella Blanchard, our 3rd cousin 4x removed on the Green/Blanchard branch, and Ida Waugh. Blanchard was an author and college educator, and met Waugh in the late 1880s when she was hired as a tutor for Frederick Judd Waugh, Ida’s half-brother.
Blanchard was born in Baltimore on June 28, 1854—172 years ago today—to Daniel Harris & Sarah (Reynolds) Blanchard. Waugh was born eight years earlier in Philadelphia, on October 24, 1846, to a family of artists. Her father, Samuel Bell Waugh, was a portrait and landscape artist, and her mother, Mary Zaida (Mendenhall) Waugh, painted miniatures. Ida Waugh’s specialties were portraiture and book illustrations, often of children. Sometimes naughty children who poked beehives, taunted bulls, fell out of boats, built bonfires, and dressed their dogs up to dance with them. (OK, that last one wasn’t so bad.)
Exactly when Blanchard was hired by the Waughs for Frederick is unclear, but he was born in 1861, so the best guess would be the late 1870s or early 1880s. Amy Blanchard and Ida Waugh would go on to collaborate on many books for children—Wee Babies, A Girl of ’76, Dimple Dallas: The Further Fortunes of a Sweet Little Maid, and others.
Blanchard and Waugh lived in the same home in Manhattan, and bought side-by-side cottages in Bailey Island, Maine, where they summered. Waugh was the first to pass away, as announced by the New York Times on January 27, 1919:
Miss Ida Waugh, Painter
Miss Ida Waugh, a painter of portraits and figure pieces, died suddenly Saturday [January 25] at her home at 245 East Nineteenth Street. Miss Waugh was a student many years ago at the Académie Julian and the Académie Delécluse, in Paris. Her principal painting, “Hagar and Ishmael,” now the property of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, attracted favorable attention when first shown at the French Salon in 1888. Her father Samuel Waugh, was a painter of portraits; her mother Mary Z., painted miniatures; and her [half-]brother, Frederick J., was a landscape and marine artist.
Blanchard lived another seven years, passing away in dramatic fashion on the nation’s 150th birthday, July 4, 1926, as chronicled in a Baltimore newspaper:
Author of Stories for Girls Forecast Her Death in Verse
Miss Amy Ella Blanchard, Who Taught Art in
Baltimore Years Ago, Will Be Buried Today
On bookshelves in many Baltimore homes are volumes by Miss Amy Ella Blanchard, who to the juvenile female reader was what Alger was to her brother. Today the authoress will be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
There will be none of her young readers in the funeral cortege. Only Miss Blanchard’s niece, Mrs. J. S. Haug; her husband, Mr. Haug, of Philadelphia; a clergyman and two Baltimore friends will attend the funeral services. Mr. and Mrs. Haug arrived here yesterday from Bailey Island, Maine, with Miss Blanchard’s body.
Died at Summer Home
Miss Blanchard will be buried in Baltimore, her birthplace, at her own request. She died suddenly Monday at Bailey Island, her summer home. The funeral service of the Protestant Episcopal Church was read at Bailey Island by the Rev. E. P. Niles.
Miss Blanchard’s funeral will be from 108 West North Avenue at 10:30 am. The service at the grave will be read by the Rev. Dr. Arthur Chilton Powell, of St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church.
Stricken with apoplexy, Miss Blanchard was found dying by a maid of a neighbor. On the desk in front of her was a poem, just completed, in which Miss Blanchard forecast her death.
Taught Art Here
Miss Blanchard, who was born in this city in 1854, was a daughter of the late Daniel Harris Blanchard and Mrs. Sarah Reynolds Blanchard. Educated in the public schools, she became a teacher of art in the Woman’s College, now Goucher College. She held this position for some years. On retiring from the faculty of the college, Miss Blanchard devoted her entire time to writing fiction for girls.
When she was 16 years old she made her first contribution to the press. This was a poem, printed in a Salem (Mass.) newspaper. Three years later her first book was published. It was not until 1893 that she obtained her first success with her stories.
Won Prizes for Stories
Twenty years ago, Miss Blanchard moved from Baltimore to Washington, where she lived at 1680 Thirty-first street, NW. Last year she won for the third successive year the first prize in a national contest under auspices of the League of American Penwomen of Washington for the best story written by American women authors.
She is survived by a sister, Mrs. M. C. Pearson, of Philadelphia; another niece, Mrs. H. C. Brook, of Hartford, Conn.; and three nephews, H. B. Pearson, of Chicago; A. R. Pearson, of Los Angeles; and J. R. Reading, Black Mountain, N.C.
Sadly, they were not buried together, but in their respective family plots: Ida Waugh at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia, and Blanchard at Woodlawn Cemetery in Baltimore.
One final related story: Ida Waugh’s half-brother, Frederick Judd Waugh, who Blanchard was hired to tutor, became an accomplished marine artist—he painted lots and lots of waves crashing against lots and lots of shorelines—and was hired to “dazzle camouflage” US ships from German U-boats during World War I. Here is the USS Leviathan, his best-known commission:
No comments:
Post a Comment