"The 80th Birthday Party, June 1897 to June 1977"

Title

"The 80th Birthday Party, June 1897 to June 1977"

Description

"'Birthday Party, June 1897 to June 1977.' Birthday Party for Ragdale [and] Sylvia. Sylvia is photographed and Evelyn also. Note the clothes they are wearing, they are from the attic collection." -- from the note by and later comment by Alice Hayes.

Shown here are the two older sisters, the 1890s daughters of Howard and Frances Wells Shaw. A third daughter, never known by this writer to visit Ragdale after the early 1970s, was Theodora (b. 1912). But these two were very close, Sylvia the younger of the two, born in 1897, and Evelyn, born ca. 1894. After the death of Frances Wells Shaw in 1937, they kept Ragdale going, by the 1970s with much personal yard work and involvement with helpers. this shows them a few months before Evelyn's death, in November 1977, and a year before Sylvia's passing in 1898.

Evelyn lived at North Ragdale, the 1938-built gamblrel-roofed two-story brick house resting on the west side of the Ragdale ring garden theater (seating area, derived from Jens Jensen council ring ideas), from ca. 1912. That house was designed by Theodora's spouse, architect John Lord King, for Evelyn and her spouse from the 1910s to 1949, John t. McCutcheon, author and cartoonist for he Chicago Tribune. He retired here ca. 1940, and wrote his memoirs with Evelyn, "Drawn from Memory" (1950).

Sylvia lived in the Ragdale house (behind) after her mother's death, and year around by 1942. Little was changed after some changes to winterize, clean up, in 1942.

Arthur H. Miller November 24, 2011

Source

Ragdale Scrapbook, page 137a

Publisher

Ragdale Scrapbook

Relation

Ragdale Scrapbook (Lake Forest College)

Format

image/tiff

Language

English

Type

Image

Identifier

lfspragdscrap00137a-1.jpg

Original Format

Color

Physical Dimensions

3 1/8 x 4 9/16 inches

Files

http://collections.lakeforest.edu/omeka/plugins/Dropbox/files/lfspragdscrap00137a-1.jpg

Collection

Citation

“"The 80th Birthday Party, June 1897 to June 1977",” Digital Collections - Lake Forest College, accessed March 29, 2024, https://collections.lakeforest.edu/items/show/3399.

Output Formats