Series 1:  Ruth Le Prade 

Biographical Note

Ruth Le Prade was born on July 20, 1894, near Modesto, California to William and Mary Coward. Her name was Ruth Le Prade Coward until she dropped her last name as a teenager. She moved to Los Angeles around 1913, where she spent the rest of her life. She was discovered by Edwin Markham in 1915 during his travels in Los Angeles. At the time, Le Prade was attending Manual Arts High School. After her graduation from high school, Le Prade attended the University of California, Berkeley, and J.F. Rowny Press published her first volume of poetry, A Woman Free, in 1917. The volume was introduced by Edwin Markham and well-received critically. Le Prade, a pacifist and socialist, met her husband Harold Story while protesting World War I in Southern California. They wed in 1919, upon Story’s release from Camp Kearny. They had one son, Eugene Le Prade Story (1926-1945). After Le Prade and Story divorced, Le Prade retained custody of her son.

The Poets Garden, which began with the naming of trees already in Le Prade’s backyard for poets, was formally dedicated in 1927 by Edwin Markham with the planting of the Song Tree (a sycamore). Le Prade died May 25, 1969 in Los Angeles.

Scope and Content

This series contains Ruth Le Prade’s personal papers, including her personal correspondence, papers documenting her son’s life and service in the Army during World War II, Le Prade’s campaign to get Wesley Robert Wells’s death sentence commuted or pardoned, typescripts and manuscripts of her prose and poetry, her notebooks and other manuscript notes, photographs, ephemera, financial and legal records, newspaper and magazine clippings (as well as whole issues of newspapers, particularly the Los Angeles Tribune), scrapbooks, and the records pertaining to the operation of the Poets Garden and the events Le Prade held there.

Arrangement

This series has been arranged into 15 sub-series:

1.A Correspondence

1.B Eugene Le Prade Story

1.C Wesley Robert Wells

1.D The Angel of the Jails (Faith Chevaillier Biography)

1.E Edwin Markham Biography

1.F Prose Manuscripts & Typescripts

1.G Poetry Manuscripts & Typescripts

1.H Financial Records, Business Papers and Calendars

1.I Subject Files & Notes

1.J School Notes & Papers

1.K Poets Garden Celebrations

1.L Photographs & Ephemera

1.M Newsletters & Clippings

1.N Notebooks

1.O Miscellaneous

Series 2:  Edwin Markham 

Biographical Note

Edwin Markham was born Charles Edward Anson Markham in Oregon City, Oregon, on April 23, 1852. He moved to northern California with his mother when he was four. He graduated from San Jose State Normal School in 1872. He married his first wife, Annie Cox, in 1875, and held a number of positions at schools in northern and central California. He divorced Annie in 1884; in 1887 he married his second wife, Caroline Bailey. They parted after only a few years, and Markham married his third and final wife, Anna Catherine Murphy, whom he met while living in Oakland, in 1898.

Between 1880, when Markham’s poetry was first published, and 1899, when the San Francisco Chronicle published “The Man with the Hoe,” Markham continued his career in education while also focusing on his development and success as a writer. “The Man with the Hoe” brought Markham into the national spotlight as a poet, as its themes resonated with the populist sentiments of the time; but his fame peaked two years later with the publication of his book  Lincoln and Other Poems. In 1901, Markham moved with his family (he and Anna had a son, Virgil) to Staten Island, where Markham remained for the rest of his life. Shortly after moving to New York, Markham met Florence Hamilton, the lady who would serve as his secretary for sixteen years. Markham continued to write poetry and lecture on the literary lecture circuit until he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1936. In 1937 he was declared mentally incompetent by a court in New York, and in 1938 Anna passed away. After her passing, Markham was largely confined to his house until his death on March 7, 1940. He was buried in Los Angeles.

Scope and Content

This series contains manuscripts of poems, lectures and other works by Markham, some correspondence about his biography and mental state, clippings of publications by or about Markham, photographs and ephemera. Materials pertaining to Markham’s biography can also be found in the Series 1: Ruth Le Prade and Series 3: Florence Hamilton.

Series 3:  Florence Hamilton 1902-1960 

Biographical Note

Florence Hamilton (nee Danforth) was born in Upper Jay, New York, on July 20, 1873. She married Ernest Hamilton around 1890. From 1920-1936 she served as Edwin Markham’s secretary and lecture manager. After Markham’s death in 1940, she was an active lecturer on poetry and a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Poetry Forum and the Congress of American Poets. She was also a founding member of the Academy of American Poets. In 1939 she published the poetry volume A Moment’s Monument, and in 1942 she published  Mirrors and Human Voices. She passed away in Richmond, Virginia, in 1968.

Scope and Content

This series contains Florence Hamilton’s correspondence, typescript drafts of her biography of Edwin Markham (never published), periodical and newspaper clippings by or about Hamilton, ephemera and photographs. Hamilton’s main correspondent in this series was Ruth Le Prade, although correspondence from others, including Edwin Markham, is also present in this series.

Series 4:  Alzire Adrienne "Faith" Chevaillier 1876-1968 

Biographical Note

Faith Chevaillier (nee Alzire Adrienne Chevaillier) was born in Nagadoches, Texas on December 1, 1850, to Charles and Sarah Chevaillier. Her father passed away in 1853, however, and she was raised by her mother and her mother’s family in Boston, Massachusetts. While living in Boston, she was closely connected with Wendell Phillips, who provided her an entrance into the institutional reform movements aimed at prisons and mental institutions. Chevaillier held positions on various councils and commissions and testified before Congressional investigation committees on the reform of the American prison system. In 1891, she and her mother traveled to Santa Rosa, California, to visit Thomas Lake Harris’s utopian community. After six months there, Alzire wrote an expose for the San Francisco Chronicle that caused the eventual dissolution of the community in 1893. Once settled in California, Chevaillier continued her involvement in various reform movements, frequently visiting inmates in jails, prisons and mental institutions. She passed away in 1935.

Scope and Content

This series contains Faith Chevaillier’s correspondence, typescripts of a few of her articles, her financial records and business records, including the documents for a gold mine in South America, her notebooks and travel documents, and files on the causes for which she was an active advocate, including prison reform and the institutionalization of the mentally impaired. The correspondence in this series includes her correspondence with Phillip Brooks in the 1880s, birthday and other greeting cards, and her correspondence about the case and trial of Charles J. Guiteau, who assassinated President James Garfield after being instructed by God to do so. Also included in this series are newspaper and periodical clippings by or about Chevaillier, ephemera, photographs and self-improvement literature to which Chevaillier subscribed.

Series 5:  Eugene Debs 1881-1958 

Biographical note

Eugene Victor Debs was born November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He became a labor organizer at 20, when he became a charter member of the local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He was sentenced to jail in 1895 after being held in contempt of court in connection with the Pullman Strike in Chicago. Debs ran for president of the United States five times, always on the Socialist Party of America’s ticket. He ran in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. In 1912, he received 6% of the popular vote; in 1920, he received 3% of the vote, despite the fact that at that time he was incarcerated in Atlanta, Georgia, for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. His sentence was commuted by President Warren G. Harding on Christmas Day, 1921, but his health was failing and he never really recovered. Debs passed away on October 20, 1926 in a sanitarium outside of Chicago, Illinois.

Scope and Content

This series was compiled by Ruth Le Prade to include both her correspondence with Theodore and Eugene Debs and the records from the publication of Debs and the Poets. These records include typescripts and manuscripts of the pieces included in the book, correspondence with the authors of the pieces and Upton Sinclair (the book’s publisher). Also included in this series are pamphlets and ephemera about Debs, newspaper clippings by or about Debs, and a campaign button from his 1920 presidential campaign.

Series 6:  Robert Whitaker 1917-1941 

Biographical Note

Robert Whitaker was born in Lancashire, England in 1863. His family moved to Massachusetts in 1869. Whitaker attended Lawrence Academy and the Andover-Newton Theological School. He graduated in 1887 and married his first wife, Ellen Lingely, before spending a year as a missionary in Aguas Caliente, Mexico. He held Baptist pastorates in Seattle, Washington, and Salem, Oregon, before settling in Northern California in 1893 as the pastor of a church in Oakland. Ellen passed away in 1901, and in 1907 Whitaker married Claire Wall. He held a pastorate in Los Gatos from 1909-1921. Whitaker was also a politically active socialist and was arrested with Harold Story for protesting World War I. He was the editor of The Open Forum, the newsletter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, from 1924-1926 and wrote frequently for a number of other socialist and/or Christian journals. He also spent decades campaigning for the release of Tom Mooney, who was convicted of carrying out the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916. From 1926 until his death in 1944, Whitaker taught and wrote prose and verse for religious and labor publications from his home in Los Gatos. His wife Claire outlived him, passing away in 1977 in Northern California.

Scope and Content

This series contains Robert Whitaker’s incoming and outgoing correspondence, Ruth Le Prade’s correspondence with Whitaker’s widow, Claire Whitaker, photographs and typescript and manuscript drafts of Whitaker’s articles for labor and Christian publications, monographs and poetry. Issues of Whitaker’s socialist publication The Los Gatos Idea, newspaper clippings by or about Whitaker, and other ephemeral publications are also included in this series.

Series 7:  Guy Bogart 1909-1965 

Biographical Note

Guy Bogart was born in 1883 in Dusenberg, Indiana. He moved to Los Angeles as a young man and worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In 1923, Bogart moved to Beaumont, California (in Riverside County), and lived there for the rest of his life. He was elected to the Beaumont City Council in 1924 and later served as the city’s mayor and as the president of the Beaumont Chamber of Commerce. He married his wife, Lucy, before moving to California, and they had one son, Robert. Bogart passed away in Beaumont on November 13, 1957.

Scope and Content

This series contains correspondence between Guy Bogart and Ruth Le Prade, photographs, ephemera from the Beaumont Cherry Festivals and other events held in Beaumont, and some of Bogart’s published poetry.

Series 8:  Genevieve Farnell Bond 1920-1957 

Biographical Note

Genevieve Farnell Bond (d. 1961) was a journalist and poet, who lived in Los Angeles until she moved with her husband Rollin Bond to Washington, D.C. She was a good friend of Edwin Markham and a nationally published poet.

Scope and Content

This series contains Genevieve Farnell Bond’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, four letters to Bond from Edwin Markham, photographs and periodical and newspaper clippings.

Series 9:  Verne Bright 1900-1961 

Biographical note

Verne Bright was born in 1893. He attended Pacific Lutheran University after serving in Siberia during World War I. During the Depression he was the supervisor of the professional and service divisions of the Works Progress Administration. During World War II he worked in the shipyards in Portland, Oregon, and after the war he worked as a newspaper reporter, freelance writer, the assistant postmaster of Aloha, and the assistant curator of the Oregon Historical Society. He was a prolific poet, published in the  North American Poetry Review,  Saturday Evening Post,  Poetry,  London Poetry Review, the  New York Times, but probably best known for his 1948 book  Mountain Man, which earned him an honorary doctorate in letters from Pacific Lutheran University, where he taught for two years. Bright passed away in 1977 in Oregon.

Scope and Content

This series contains Bright’s correspondence to and from Ruth Le Prade, typescripts of some of his poetry, ephemera, photographs, and newspaper clippings by or about him.

Series 10:  Grace Bush 1923-1967 

Biographical note

Grace E. Bush (1884-1967) was an American composer, singer, lecturer and poet.

Scope and Content

This series includes Grace Bush’s correspondence, photographs, ephemera and music scores.

Series 11:  Ethelean Tyson Gaw 1918-1962 

Biographical note

Ethelean Tyson Gaw was born January 1, 1877 in Philadelphia to Israel and Julia Reynolds Tyson. She married her husband, Allison Gaw, also of Philadelphia, in 1909. They moved to Los Angeles in 1911, and Allison became a literature professor at USC. Ethelean was a poet, editor and writer who was active in many of Southern California’s women’s literary organizations. In 1921, she sold her play Pharaoh’s Daughter to the Shubert theatre production company for a run in New York. She passed away on January 29, 1962, in Los Angeles.

Scope and Content

This series contains the correspondence of both Ethelean Tyson Gaw, as well as some of her husband, Dr. Allison Gaw, typescript and manuscript drafts and printer’s proofs of her plays, articles and poetry and records related to the production of Pharaoh’s Daughter staged by Shubert in New York. Also included in this series are ephemera, newspaper and periodical clippings by or about the Gaws, photographs and her calendars for 1954, 1955, 1958 and 1959.

Series 12:  Moon Kwan 1928-1964 

Biographical note

Moon Kwan (1896-1995) was born in Guangzhou, China, and moved to San Francisco as a young boy. Kwan was a poet, screenwriter and film producer who moved to Los Angeles in 1915. He stayed there until 1920, but then spent much of his life travelling between San Francisco, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. He planted a ginkgo tree in the Poets Garden in 1934.

Scope and Content

This series contains Moon Kwan’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, his daughter Rebecca’s correspondence with Le Prade and Le Prade’s correspondence with other people about Kwan. Also included in this series are newspaper clippings by or about Kwan and ephemera pertaining to Chinese movies shown in Los Angeles.

Series 13:  Seumas MacManus 1934-1968 

Biographical note

Originally from County Donegal, Ireland, Seumas MacManus (b. 1869) moved to the United States in 1899. As an artist, traveler, and writer, Seumas MacManus considered himself a "shanachie," or writer in the tradition of Irish storytelling that dated back to that country's antiquity. He married the Irish poet Anna Johnston in 1901, but she passed away the following year. In 1911, he remarried and had one daughter, Patricia. He passed away in 1960.

Scope and Content

This series contains MacManus’s correspondence to and from Ruth Le Prade, typescripts, photographs and ephemera. It also contains a small amount of correspondence between Le Prade and other parties about MacManus.

Series 14:  Eric Mayne 1936-1962 

Biographical note

Eric Mayne (1865-1947) was a stage and movie actor. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to the United States around 1913. He began his career as a stage actor in Ireland and on London’s West End stages. After moving to Los Angeles, he appeared in over 180 films, and became a noted lecturer on Shakespeare. He planted the Shakespeare Tree in the Poets Garden.

Scope and Content

This series contains Mayne’s correspondence, predominantly to and from Ruth Le Prade, a few pieces of ephemera, and Mayne’s typescripts and manuscripts. Also included in this series is correspondence from Dolores McBride to Ruth Le Prade about Mayne and photographs of Mayne in the Poets Garden.

Series 15:  Juanita Miller 1909-1962 

Biographical note

Juanita Miller (1880-1970) was the daughter of poet Joaquin Miller. She lived in Northern California, where she ran a tea shop and was a leader in various feminist movements. She was a poet and known for being an eccentric bohemian.

Scope and Content

This series contains Miller’s correspondence to and from Ruth Le Prade, correspondence to and from Le Prade and Miller’s friends, including Colonel George Oden, ephemera, sheet music, programs to Joaquin Miller Park events, a bibliography of Joaquin Miller, and newspaper clippings by or about the Millers (both Juanita and Joaquin).

Series 16:  Angela Morgan 1934-1967 

Biographical Note

Little concrete information is known about Angela Morgan, but she was probably born Nina Lillian Morgan around 1875 in Yazoo County, Mississippi. After the departure of her father for mining interests in Colorado in 1890, she and her three sisters formed a quartet and went on the road with their brother Albert as manager. They called themselves "The Morgan Sisters" and "The Angela Sisters," but the group disbanded in 1898 upon the death of one of her sisters and the marriages of the other two. Morgan married Peter Swenigson in 1900, but the marriage quickly fell apart and they were divorced in 1906.

From 1900 to 1915, Morgan worked as a journalist for the Chicago Daily American, the  New York American, and the  Boston American. In 1915, Morgan became a full time poet under the patronage of Mrs. John Henry Hammond and later Mrs. Andrew Carnegie. She is best known for her poem "Battle Cry of the Mothers," which was published in 1915, the same year Morgan attended the International Congress of Women at The Hague. Morgan lived with her mother in New York while writing, and then they lived in London from 1923-1926. Over the course of her career as a journalist and as a speaker on the literary lecture circuit, Morgan came into frequent contact with labor leaders and other important social reformers. Her anti-war and reforming views are present in much of her writings. Upon her return to the States, she settled in Philadelphia and served as resident poet at Ogontz Junior College, president of the Philadelphia branch of the League of American Pen Women and chairman of the literary arts committee of the Philadelphia Arts Alliance. In 1936 she was elected poet laureate of the National Federation of Women's Clubs. Morgan spent time travelling the western part of the United States in the late 1930s, and spent most of the last decade or so of her life in Vermont and New York. She passed away on January 24, 1957, in Mt. Marion, New York.

Scope and Content

This series contains Angela Morgan’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, correspondence between Le Prade and others about Morgan, and a few issues of some of the publications with which Morgan was involved.

Series 17:  Dion O'Donnol 1938-1971 

Biographical note

Dion O’Donnol (1912-2007) was a writer of both poetry and prose and ran the small press Wagon & Star Press with Arthur Faulconer. He was a regular attendee of Poets Garden events.

Scope and Content

This series contains O’Donnol’s correspondence to and from Ruth Le Prade, issues of his periodical publications Path of Beauty and  The Historian, letterpress copies of his poetry, ephemera, and newspaper clippings by or about him.

Series 18:  Gordon Norris 1941-1957 

Biographical Note

Gordon Norris was born on August 8, 1907, in Redlands, California, to Ann and Matthew Norris. He married his first wife, Mary Ann, in 1944. After she passed away in 1958, he married his second wife, Ellen. He was appointed Poet Laureate of California by the state legislature in 1953. He held the position until he was killed in a car accident in 1961.

Scope and Content

This series contains correspondence between Gordon and Ellen Norris and Ruth Le Prade, papers pertaining to the settlement of Norris estate and other legal proceedings against him, typescript and manuscript drafts of Norris’s poetry, his poetry notebooks and ephemera. Also included in this series are awards and citations received by Norris, photographs, his calendars for the years 1953-1958, a scrapbook commemorating Poetry Observance Day (October 16, 1956), his address book and newspaper clippings.

Series 19:  Ruth Clay Price (Ruth Price Simpson) 1940-1965 

Biographical Note

Ruth Clay Price was born in California around 1889. She married Wilfred Simpson and they had one daughter, Ruth De Ette Simpson, born in 1918. Price had prose and poetry published in a number of national publications.

Scope and Content

This series contains Ruth Clay Price’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, manuscript and typescript drafts of her plays, articles and poetry, photographs and her daughter Ruth De Ette Simpson’s baby book.

Series 20:  Adeline de Walt "Grandma" Reynolds 

Biographical Note

“Grandma Reynolds” was born Adeline de Walt in Iowa in 1862. She married Frank Reynolds, and they had three daughters and one son. After Frank passed away in 1906, Reynolds went back to school, attending the University of California at Berkeley. She started acting at 70, and frequently played grandmothers in films and on television for the next three decades. At time of her death, on August 13, 1961, she was the oldest active member of the Screen Actors Guild (at 98).

Scope and Content

This series contains Adeline de Walt’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, photographs of de Walt in many of her film and television roles, periodical and newspaper clippings by or about de Walt and theatrical programs.

Series 21:  Luther Standing Bear 1922-1935 

Biographical note

Luther Standing Bear (December 1868-February 20, 1939) was born Ota Kte (Plenty Kill) on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to an Oglala Lakota family and raised in the Sioux tradition. He was one of the first students to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where he chose his new name. After graduating, he lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation until he became a dancer and horseback rider for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The show gave him the exposure necessary to receive Hollywood roles, and between 1916 and 1935, he was in thirteen movies and became a member of the Screen Actors Guild of Hollywood.

In addition to acting, Standing Bear also published a number of books aimed at educating the public about Native American culture and their mistreatment by the federal government. Standing Bear died in 1939 after contracting the flu while on the set of the movie Union Pacific.

Scope and Content

Series contains Standing Bear’s correspondence with Europeans about his works, especially My People, the Sioux, and their foreign translations, as well as with some of his publishers. Also included in this series are some Native American artifacts, a scrapbook containing clippings and photographs about Standing Bear, Native American and Standing Bear's friend Bill Hart, and a notepad dated 1922.

Series 22:  John Milton Scott 1936-1968 

Biographical note

The Christian poet John Milton Scott was born in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, in April 1854, and died in Los Angeles, California, on March 20, 1928. He received a B.A. and an M.A. from Lafayette College and was the pastor of the Unitarian Church in Ithaca, New York for many years. While in New York, he was the editor of the spiritual magazine The Grail. He also published volumes of his poetry, including  Kindly Light.

Scope and Content

This series contains John Milton Scott’s correspondence, typescript and manuscript drafts of his poetry and plays and clippings by or about Scott and pamphlets.

Series 23:  Ruth Forbes Sherry 1944-1961 

Biographical note

Ruth Forbes Sherry was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1883. She attended Vassar College and Stanford University, where she met her husband, Ralph Sherry. They married in 1909 and had two sons and one daughter. Ruth was a nationally-recognized poet, but did not start writing poetry until she was 50. She passed away in Orange County, California, in 1970.

Scope and Content

This series contains Ruth Forbes Sherry’s correspondence, drafts of her poetry, a poetry scrapbook, and periodical clippings by or about Sherry.

Series 24:  Selman Warren Stone 1904-1955 

Biographical note

Selman Warren Stone (1907-1960) was born in New Mexico and raised in California’s Imperial Valley. He published a volume of poetry titled Pale Princess in 1942. Ruth Le Prade wrote the introduction for the volume. He served in the Army during World War II at the Salinas Army Air Station and was hospitalized at Fort Ord. He was found dead one morning in 1960 in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

Scope and Content

This series contains Stone’s correspondence with Ruth Le Prade, manuscripts and typescripts of his poetry and ephemera.

Series 25:  Lucia Trent 1934-1952 

Biographical note

Lucia Trent (1897-1977) married E. Ralph Cheyney (b. 1897) in 1927, and they lived in Connecticut and Pennsylvania until moving to California in the mid-1930s. In 1934, Cheyney was appointed Pennsylvania’s first poet laureate. They had three children, Ralph, Jr., Trent and Lucia. Both Trent and Cheyney were politically active pacifists. The couple wrote and taught poetry in Southern California schools until Cheyney’s death from acute appendicitis in Texas in 1941. Lucia married Ernest Glass in November 1942, and resided in Texas until her death in 1977.

Scope and Content

This series contains newspaper and periodical clippings of Lucia Trent and Ralph Cheyney’s poetry and prose, some typescript drafts of Cheyney’s poetry and prose, publications with which Trent and Cheyney were involved, and Lucia Trent’s correspondence, primarily with Ruth Le Prade and Angela Morgan, along with some correspondence to and from Ruth Le Prade and Trent’s husbands, Ralph Cheyney and Ernest Glass. Also included in this series are photographs, correspondence between Hazel Rea, Ruth Le Prade and Lucia Trent about the literary rights to Cheyney’s works, and ephemera.

Series 26:  Publications 1928-1967 

Scope and Content

This series contains most of the publications found in the Poets Garden Records. They have been separated into four different subseries based on type of publication. The items in the Literary Periodicals sub-series include both poetry and prose publications; those in Other Periodicals cover a range of topics, including religion, current events and socialism. The items in the Ephemera sub-series are mainly rosters, bulletins and annual reports published by different organizations. The items in Monographs and other publications are those for which there was a single author or that did not appear to be periodicals.

Arrangement

The publications found in the Poets Garden Records have been arranged into four sub-series based on type of publication: literary periodicals, other periodicals, ephemera, and monographs.

Most of the publications were removed from the collection and cataloged into USC's library catalog with a provenance note in the appropriate field.