Cornelia A. Brownlee (1887-1968)

Update (Oct. 13, 2013)
Cornelia Arnold Brownlee was born on February 8, 1887 (some sources say 1888), in Princeton, Indiana. According to public records, her father, Charles R. Brownlee, married Sallie G. Hall on June 18, 1874, in Gibson County, Indiana. By the time of the 1880 census, Brownlee was a widower and living with his mother-in-law, Catherine Hall, and her daughter, Mariah Hall. Charles Brownlee also had his two children, Paul S. and Therese Hall Brownlee, with him. Brownlee married Mariah Hall and from that marriage Cornelia Arnold Brownlee was born. Charles Brownlee's second wife died young, for on November 14, 1889, again in Gibson County, he married Charlotte Lockhart.

Cornelia Brownlee graduated from Princeton High School in the class of January 1905. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under John H. Vanderpoel (1857-1911). Cornelia also studied with Dudley Crafts Watson (1885-1972) and his sketching class in Paris and in Europe, and under a fellowship with the American Girl's Club in Paris. She was in Europe when war broke out in the summer of 1914. She arrived safely back in the United States on August 29, 1914. Cornelia traveled again to France and England in 1924 for her studies.

Cornelia Brownlee was living in Princeton and employed as an artist when the enumerator counted her in the 1910 U.S. census. By 1920, she was in New York City. She married Waldo Curyea Walker on August 27 of that year. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Waldo C. Walker was an aviator in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, a newspaperman, and a writer of short stories. He later became circulation manager of the New York Times.

Cornelia Brownlee provided illustrations for Designer (Feb. 1921), Woman's Home Companion (Feb. 1924, Mar. 1927), and Collier's (July 23, 1927). Unfortunately I don't have any images to show. By the 1930 census she was living in Manhattan with her husband and still working as an artist. Nineteen forty found her in Putnam County, New York, above New York City. Waldo C. Walker died on September 8, 1961, in Carmel, New York. His wife survived him by nearly seven years. She died in Fairhope, Alabama, on February 25, 1968, at age eighty-one (or eighty) and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Notes: Cornelia Arnold Brownlee Walker should not be confused with Cornelia Brownlee (ca. 1879-1933) of Marion, Indiana. That Cornelia Brownlee was a music teacher.

Thanks to the commenters below for their information.

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Original Article
The case of Cornelia Brownlee presents a mystery. There were at least two Indiana-born women--near contemporaries--who shared that name. One Cornelia Brownlee was born in 1887 in Princteon, Indiana, daughter of Charles and Charlotte Brownlee. She graduated from Princeton High School in 1905 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under the renowned teacher John H. Vanderpoel. She also went to Europe with Dudley Crafts Watson and under a fellowship from the American Girl's Club in Paris. In 1910, she was living in Princeton and employed as an artist. By the early 1920s, Cornelia was working as an illustrator for magazines such as Collier's, Designer, and Woman's Home Companion.

The other Cornelia Brownlee was born in Indiana in about 1879, perhaps in Marion. Her parents were John Q. and Frances Brownlee. She studied at the Strassburger Conservatory of Music in St. Louis and under W.H. Slierwood in Chicago and Rafael Joseffy in New York. In 1900, she was enumerated in the census while living in Crowley, Louisiana, and teaching music. This Cornelia Brownlee appears to have toured on the Chautauqua circuit during the 1910s. She was also head of the Illinois Wesleyan University music department from 1918 until an unknown date. From 1926 until 1933, Cornelia Brownlee taught music at LaGrange Female College in LaGrange, Georgia. On the night of November 15, 1933, she was traveling to Atlanta with some students when the car in which she was riding was involved in an accident. Cornelia Brownlee was thrown from the vehicle and killed. Seven students were injured. Her body was sent to her sister, Catherine W. (Mrs. William) Boynton, in Alton, Illinois.

I have also found a record for a Cornelia Brownlee who married Waldo C. Walker, a circulation manager for the New York Times. He passed away in 1961. Cornelia Brownlee Walker died in Alabama in 1968. The mystery remains. It's evident that Cornelia Brownlee the illustrator and Cornelia Brownlee the music teacher were two different women. But was Cornelia Brownlee the illustrator the same woman who married Waldo C. Walker? A second mystery: where is Cornelia Brownlee's art? I haven't been able to find any images of her work. I hope someone can offer a solution to the mystery.

Thanks to Jacqueline Hornsby, LaGrange College, and Clark Johnson, Troup County Historian, for information on Cornelia Brownlee.

Revised on July 22, 2018.

Copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Oscar L. Davidson (1875-1922)

Oscar L. Davidson was born on March 2, 1875, in either Ogden or Fithian, Illinois, but lived in Indianapolis for more than half his life. He was known as a woodcarver and illustrator of historic ships. In the eleven years prior to his death, he operated a commercial art business with his oldest son Austin. Davidson was a member of the Society of Indiana Artists, Indiana Illustrators Club, and Art Association of Indianapolis. He died at home in Indianapolis on January 3, 1922, and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery.

Update (July 14, 2014): I received this image of a painting by Oscar L. Davidson from an anonymous reader. This reader believes the medium to be gouache. The date is unknown, but it appears to have been from the early 1900s, perhaps around 1910 to 1920. Note the reworked portion of the picture in the upper left. Thank you, Anonymous. 

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Clare Robin Zimmer (1889-1982)

Clare Robin Zimmer was born on October 2, 1889, in Elkhart, Indiana, and studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. As a young man, he worked as shoe store clerk in his hometown. Zimmer married in 1913, also in Elkhart. By 1917, he had two small children and was working as a commercial artist for Lammers Engraving Company in Cincinnati. Zimmer also lived and worked in Dayton, Ohio, in the same field. His son, Robert Clare Zimmer (1917-2006), was an engineer and professional soldier. The elder Zimmer died on February 28, 1982, in Florida. I know nothing more about him or his work and lack even an image for this posting. If anyone runs across something more on Robin Clare Zimmer, I would like to hear about it.

Copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Happy Birthday to Indiana Illustrators

Indiana Illustrators began one year ago today, on September 29, 2010. One of the very best things about writing this blog is the comments I receive from family members of illustrators. Please feel free to write me at any time, by using the comments block below or by regular email at info@hoosiercartoonists.com. I'm especially interested in finding artwork created by Indiana illustrators and cartoonists inasmuch as their work has too often been thought of as ephemeral, and because of that, has disappeared from public view. Thanks for reading!

Copyright 2011, 2204 Terence E. Hanley

Wilson Reed Berry (1851-1928)

On Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, after two days of high winds, heavy rains began to fall on the northern Indiana town of Logansport. By Tuesday, March 25, the Wabash River was out of its banks and beginning to inundate the city. Located at the confluence of the Eel River and the Wabash River, the longest in Indiana, Logansport was under water for three days. Miraculously, by noon on Friday, a week after the winds had begun, the river was back in its banks and Logansport had begun its recovery from that great and memorable flood.

Just east of where the Eel River flows into the Wabash, Biddle's Island saw severe damage and destruction that spring. Both bridges to the island were out, one a wreck, the other swept away. A large house on the island, called appropriately enough “Island Home,” was also flooded. Built in the previous century by John Tipton, Island Home was long the residence of Horace P. Biddle (1811-1900), a lawyer, judge, poet, musicologist, and member of the Indiana constitutional convention of 1850. His house on Biddle’s Island "was filled with flowers, music, art, and the largest private library in Indiana of more than 8,500 books." (1) An insatiable reader and largely self-taught, Biddle died in 1900. His house was eventually acquired by another autodidact, Wilson Reed Berry, a man who, in contrast, was not known to have read a book in his lifetime. The flood of 1913 inundated Island Home and damaged or destroyed Berry's collection of paintings and pioneer artifacts, as well as (presumably) a letter from Queen Victoria congratulating Berry on his success as an artist. Despite the loss of his home and prized possessions, Berry soldiered on, painting until the end of his life.

Wilson Reed Berry, nicknamed Wils or Wiltz, came from a large Indiana farm family. He was born on April 22, 1851, in Cass County, the seventh of John H. and Harriett Reed Berry's thirteen children. Descended from a Revolutionary War veteran, Wils Berry grew up near Adamsboro, Indiana. As a boy he was more interested in drawing and painting than any other profession or trade. At age twenty-one and encouraged by an older local artist, John Forgy, Berry submitted some drawings to the Beldon Atlas Company of Chicago. Hired as a sketch artist, Berry traveled for ten years over thirty states and into Canada, drawing and painting landscapes and pictures of farms and animals. Berry also drew the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, a work that was later sent to the royal family, the same work that won him accolades from Queen Victoria.

Berry's mother died in 1872 and his father remarried in 1874. Wils Berry may have met his future wife at his father's wedding. Her name was Emma Conner and she had good reason to be there, for her mother, Ellen Sackett Conner, was John Berry's bride. Wils Berry and Emma Conner were married on January 30, 1878, in Cass County. The young couple took a stagecoach across an iced-over Lake Ontario for their honeymoon trip. By year's end, they had had a son, Murillo, born in Canada on December 9, 1878. In their travels, the Berry family lived in hotels and boarding houses. In 1880, they were in Luzerne, Pennsylvania. Nineteen hundred found them back in Indiana, on a Fulton County farm. Eventually they returned to their home county to the south and settled in Logansport.

In the mid 1890s, Wils Berry taught painting at Michael's College (formerly Smithson College), located north of Logansport at the summit of College Hill. Nearly two decades before a flood destroyed his home, a fire burned the main college building on October 6, 1896, leaving a mere shell of blackened brick and Berry without a job. Berry's daughter remembered the event: "My mother and I were shopping when that happened. She thought it might have been our house on fire when she saw the smoke. My father didn't really lose anything in the fire, but the college was destroyed and they never rebuilt it." (2) To make up for the lost employment, Berry began giving private art lessons to the young ladies of Logansport. It was not uncommon after that to see him and his students about town, painting en plein air. (3)

By 1910, Berry was living on Biddle's Island with his family gathered around him. In addition to Berry’s wife Emma, there was their oldest child, Don Murillo, a painter in oil and watercolor. (4) Younger brother Willis wielded a brush as well, but he worked as a painter of houses instead of canvases. Virgil practiced law, while Inez taught kindergarten. (The remaining child, teacher, sketch artist, and painter Percy Berry, had died nearly a decade before.) The flood of 1913 may have brought their family idyll to an end. By 1920, the Berrys lived on Gate Street in Logansport, but only Willis remained at home.

A sometime farmer and collector of paintings and artifacts from pioneer days, Berry painted and sketched throughout his life. In addition to drawing and painting pictures of family farms, he created murals, painted curtains for opera houses, and decorated circus wagons in nearby Peru, winter home of the nation's circuses. Logansport Republicans carried his painting "Abe Lincoln the Rail-Splitter" in their parades and displayed it in their headquarters. Berry also created works for hotels in French Lick and Huntington. Today his work is in the collections of  the Cass County Historical Society and the La Porte County Historical Society Museum. Wilson Reed Berry died on April 28, 1928, and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in the county of his birth.

Notes
(1) "Judge Biddle of Biddle's Island" by Richard B. Copeland, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, May 2, 2008.

(2) Quoted in an interview of Inez Berry Brunegraff (1890-1989) in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, date unknown.

(3) Michael's College was in operation from 1895 to 1896, hence Berry would not have taught there for long.

(4) Murillo Berry (1878-1965), also called Don or Don Murillo, was an artist like his father. Murillo's full name may in fact have been Don Murillo Berry, perhaps after the Spanish Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), or he may have assumed the name "Don" as an honorific.

Acknowledgements

I thank La Porte County Historian Fern Eddy Schultz for her extensive research on Wilson Reed Berry and his family and for her securing permission to publish Berry's painting below. Much of the information I used to write this article came from her. I also acknowledge the work of the Cass County Historical Society and Museum for their accounts of the razing of Michael's College and the flood of 1913.

Painter and illustrator Wilson Reed "Wils" Berry (1851-1928) in an undated photograph in the collection of the Cass County Historical Society and Museum.

"Granville Kesling Farm, Onward, Indiana" by Wils Berry, a watercolor owned by Dr. Peter Kesling and on display in the Kesling Room at the La Porte County Historical Society Museum, 2405 Indiana Avenue, Suite 1, La Porte, IN 46350. Photograph by Fern Eddy Schultz. These days, pictures like this one are taken from the air by pilot-photographers. In Berry's time, a sketch artist or landscape artist created views of the family farm, often more conceptual or idealized than naturalistic. And it was drawings like this one that would be reproduced in county atlases.

For example, this drawing (which may or may not have been created by Wils Berry), showing "Island Home" on Biddle's Island in Logansport, was probably printed in a county atlas. However, the source is unknown. Berry lived on Biddle's Island until the house shown here was inundated in the great flood of 1913. Judge Biddle had passed away many years before, in 1900. Despite the history of flooding, Biddles Island (without the apostrophe) is inhabited today. The foundation of Island Home may be hiding under the lawns of today's middle-class residences. Note the bridges in the foreground and background and the buildings of Logansport in the background on the left. The bridge in the foreground looks like the one in the photograph below.

The wreckage of the Biddle [sic] Island Bridge in Logansport, Indiana, following the flooding of March 25-28, 1913. I'm not familiar enough with Logansport to tell the view or if Island Home or its remains might be visible in this photograph (from the collection of the Cass County Historical Society and Museum).

For a brief time in the 1890s, Wilson Reed Berry taught painting at Michael's College in Logansport. Founded as Smithson College, the school is shown here in a photograph from the 1870s, in the collection of the Cass County Historical Society and Museum. The building, a grand Gothic structure, was reduced to a mere shell after a fire of October 6, 1896.

A view from Smithson College looking southward to Logansport. Smithson College was in operation from 1872 to  1878, but even in later years, when the facility was known as American Normal College (1883-1888) or Michael's College (1895-1896), it was still referred to as Smithson College. In any case, this photograph, in the collection of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, is undated but probably from the 1870s.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Clotilde Embree Funk Snapshots

Jim Deans, a reader of Indiana Illustrators, has kindly offered snapshots of Clotilde Embree from a family scrapbook. Clotilde was a friend of Jim's mother-in-law and other family members. These photographs, taken in about 1915 in Princeton, Indiana, show a glimpse of not just another time but another world. 

Photographs of Clotilde Embree and friends, taken ca. 1915 in Princeton, Indiana, probably at or near the home of Mary Skelton Welborn by an unknown photographer, submitted by Jim Deans, and owned by Catherine and Jim Deans.

Upper Left

(Left to right) Top-Mary Skelton Welborn; Clotilde Embree; unknown blonde with curls; Mary Catherine Welborn, daughter of Mary Skelton Welborn.

Bottom-Catherine Richards Butler; head of her brother, William Skelton Butler.

Right

(Left to right) Top-unknown blonde with curls.

Bottom-Catherine Richards Butler; Clotilde Embree; William S. Butler (head in hands); Mary Catherine Welborn.

Bottom Left

Clotilde Embree. Jim Deans writes: "I'm guessing ca. 1915 since she looks about 20 and Catherine Richards, b. 1902, looks about 10 to 12 in the other photos."

Jim continues: "Catherine Richards Butler was the daughter of Jessie Valerie Skelton and Horace Graham Butler. Thus Mary Skelton Welborn was her aunt."

Thanks to Catherine and Jim Deans.

Herman Stoddard Vice (1884-1956)

Painter and illustrator Herman Stoddard Vice was born the son of a minister on June 21, 1884, in Jefferson, Indiana, a small town west of Frankfurt. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and was an artist closely associated with Chicago. In September 1918, when he filled out his draft card, Vice was working for Jahn & Ollier Engraving Company in Chicago. (He also complained of having "crippled hands due to rheumatism.") Vice was a member of the Illinois Academy of Fine Arts, the South Side Art Association, and the Romany Club, as well as the Palette and Chisel Club and the Hoosier Salon in Chicago.

On November 26, 1908, Vice married Annette Zelna Border (née Menser) in Welland, Ontario. Both gave their residences as Buffalo, New York. (I detect an elopement.) The couple lived in Chicago during the censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930. In 1910, Vice gave his place of employment as a pyrography company, in other words, a firm engaged in wood-burning for graphic or decorative purposes. By 1940, the Vices were in Lebanon, Indiana, where Herman was employed as an "experimental man" in a manufacturing firm, presumably the U.S. Machine Corporation in Lebanon. Vice's situation had not changed by 1942, when he filled out his second draft card. Then a manufacturer of stokers for home furnaces and burners, the U.S. Machine Corporation is now part of Stewart Warner, a maker of gauges and other car parts.

In 1948, Herman Stoddard Vice and his wife were in Marion, Indiana, and that's where he died, on November 29, 1956. Vice was buried far from home at Grandview Cemetery in Southmont, Pennsylvania, in a plot with his wife's parents. Annette Z. Vice followed her husband to the grave in 1967.

Women by the Sea, a painting by Indiana illustrator Herman Stoddard Vice.

Midwestern Landscape by Herman Stoddard Vice.

Further works by Herman Stoddard Vice:

A lake scape, circa 1921.

Drifting Clouds, 1933.

The Sentinel.

Mount Hood.

Revised and updated on December 6, 2019, and on October 17, 2021.
Text copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley