Things I missed, part 2

I tormented myself by searching digital newspapers (more and more keep becoming available) and found two new items documenting Edith Lewis’s college years.

First, I often wondered what Edith Lewis did on her vacations in college (traveling back to Nebraska would have been very expensive and time consuming), and lo and behold! There she is in The Landmark, the 30 March 1900 the newspaper of White River Junction, Vermont, on her spring break in 1900 (second semester of her first year): “Edith Lewis, a student at Smith College, is spending her vacation at J. Bugbee’s.” Her father’s sister Ellen married John Bugbee of Hartford, so she was visiting family. Harriet Goodwin, in her senior year in the 1899-1900 academic year, was from Hartford and lived in Hatfield House with Edith Lewis, and I bet they took the train up together. I still think she probably spent time on other holidays in New Haven with Achsah Barlow, but still nice to see her connected to New England family.

Second, I found an item in the 6 September 1901 Meriden (Connecticut) Journal about the wedding of Lucy Morris Ellsworth to Dr. George Mason Creevey, and Edith Lewis was a bridesmaid! Lucy Ellsworth had just graduated from Smith and had lived in Hatfield House with Edith Lewis. Edith had spent the better part of the summer in Nebraska in 1901–no evidence she did so in 1900–and she came back for this wedding. Even more interesting is the fact that Lucy’s father was William Webster Ellsworth, an officer of the Century Publishing Co. So that’s how Edith got a job there in 1903! And that’s the “officer of the company whom I knew” to whom she showed a copy of a Willa Cather story in the summer of 1904 (see p. 66 of my book). Such a nice detail. Wish I’d had that one.

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