USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume III > Part 29
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Years ago she edited and published an educational journal in Columbus and in the columns of this school journal she first suggested the idea of
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converting the old Hayes home at Fremont, Spiegel Grove, into a library and memorial. It has since been done.
In 1900, she was appointed by Gov. George K. Nash to represent Ohio at the Paris exposition. While there she continued her newspaper work as correspondent for a bureau of United States publications as well as the As- sociated Press and Scripps-McRae syndicate.
In 1901, she was again appointed by Governor Nash as a member of the Board of Women Managers of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. In the fall of that year she was appointed by Commissioner M. B. Ratchford, State Bureau of Labor Statistics, as special inspector of workshops and factories with a view to bettering the condition of women and children. This took her to many factories and before workers, to whom she spoke in the evenings.
In 1918, she was appointed by E. M. Fullington, chairman of the Ohio Republican Advisory Committee to supervise the work of the women and publicity in the campaign for governor and for nation-wide prohibition.
In 1919 she was appointed by the Franklin County Republican committee to conduct the women's campaign and publicity in the municipal election.
In the summer of 1919, Miss Hopley was engaged on the publicity force at the time of the World's Methodist Centenary in Columbus.
In 1920 she was chosen by the Republican State Chairman of Columbus to supervise publicity in the Republican pre-primary campaign for Warren G. Harding and in the fall was engaged to conduct the same work for the presidential campaign. She was one of the hostesses at the Congress Hotel when the Republican National Convention was held in Chicago.
Georgia Hopley filled speaking engagements from Maine to Nebraska after being appointed general prohibition agent in 1922 under Federal Pro- hibition Commissioner, Roy A. Haynes, in the Constructive Information Bu- reau, Prohibition Unit, 7th and B Street, S. W., Washington, D. C.
Within recent years she has lived quietly at home in Bucyrus with her brothers, ex-Senator James R. Hopley former editor of the Evening Tele- gram and Frank L. Hopley, Lincoln Highway Council.
HARRIET E. HOPLEY
"Firsts" to the credit of HARRIET E. HOPLEY, Bucyrus, O., news- paper woman and civic leader, began when her earliest article was published in the Bucyrus Evening Journal. She was then just eight years old. By the time Harriet was sixteen, the other Bucyrus paper asked for her news be- cause of its live local interest.
As special correspondent for the Cleveland Leader, Cincinnati Gazette and Ohio State Journal, Harriet was the first girl correspondent of Ohio- as far as is known-to serve metropolitan papers.
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This was in 1882. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in a lecture at Bucyrus sev- eral years previous, had urged some sort of business or professional training for every girl, irrespective of means or position. Elizabeth had herself been the first woman notary public of New York State. Mrs. Stanton was guest at the Hopley home during her stay at Bucyrus. She had been brought there, as were a number of other distinguished men and women, by Harriet's father, John Hopley, newspaper man, educator and leading resident. So Harriet dug into her writing even harder, edited county news, even compiled, for two years, the Crawford County Almanac.
Then she changed to another field for a time-was the first woman to obtain a teacher's certificate in the state of Oklahoma. She taught in the public schools of Enid, Okla. But this could not have happened had not Harriet herself built the first schoolhouse-a little frame in which she taught privately during her first winter in the then territory. Presently Harriet went to Chicago, where she taught for 25 years in the Chinese Mission, her pupils ranging from laundrymen to the sister-in-law of the mayor of China- town.
Editorial and other writings have occupied, during recent years, this pioneer newspaper woman who so early undertook the varied responsibilities of her profession.
LAURA MENGERT HUGLEY
LAURA MENGERT HUGLEY, associate editor, with her husband Charles B. Hugley of the Somerset Press, was born in Knox County, Ohio. Both her maternal and paternal grandparents were infants in arms when they came to America from Germany in the European upturn of the late forties and early fifties. Her mother's people came originally from France. They were Hugenots and fled from their native land on the eve of the massacre of St. Bartholemew's Day.
Laura Mengert's parents had the continental idea of child-training, though her mother's notions were considerably tempered by a gentle nature. But she early learned her father's own particular version of the adage that "children should be seen and not heard." It was all right for them to be seen when they were diligently and profitably employed, and to be heard when they had actual wants. Yet as she grew older, Laura seems to have no regrets about the rather strict, not to say severe, discipline under which she was reared.
She was nurtured on McGuffey and weaned on the "Five Little Peppers," not to mention surreptitious draughts from the Alger books.
About the time she left the grade school, her parents moved to a Richland County farm, so she entered high school at Lexington, Ohio and graduated
LAURA MENGERT HUGLEY
Associate Editor, Somerset Press
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from that school. The following fall she was teaching a one-room rural school, a thing which she says, "I was entirely unfit to do. But I didn't know that, and neither, apparently, did the Board of Directors, so I con- tinued to foist myself on the unsuspecting youth of the neighborhood for two more years." Then she went to Ohio University at Athens where-"I tried to absorb some knowledge and something of teaching skill before I again began to teach." Later she taught in the primary room at Lexington, and from there went to East Liverpool, and from there to East Cleveland, teaching in the first grade.
Through the efforts of the then director of education in Ohio, and of James M. Cox, then Governor, she was given the post of director of a county normal school. These county training schools had at that time been recently established in order to hasten the preparation of teachers, who would other- wise, as she had done, go from high school graduation to teaching without any preparation. She was assigned to Ashville in Pickaway County; later the normal school grew to such proportions that they were obliged to move it to Circleville, the county seat.
She held this post for seven years, living most of the time with her brother in Columbus, H. R. Mengert, political correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer. They lived on the south side, which her brother always referred to as the Ruhr Valley. During the summer months she taught methods in teaching children to read at the State Teachers College at Bowling Green. She was there five summers-one summer she acted as movie censor, and one summer she tried out advertising in one of Columbus' department stores.
What interested her most were the techniques employed in teaching children to read. This was about the time at which Dr. Horn's revelations about eye movements in reading were made. Because she was especially attracted by the subject, she tried out a great many schemes in the training school where her young students did their practice teaching. Eventually she was visited by a representative of the Macmillan Company, and was subse- quently offered a position on the educational staff of that company. This was in 1924. She accepted it and remained with the company for nine years. She traveled over a large part of the United States, visiting branch offices of the company and interviewing supervisors of reading with the purpose of getting them interested in juvenile educational books.
Eventually she was given the task of editing an entire series of books for use in Catholic schools. This latter assignment gave her an opportunity of spending some time in a number of convents, visiting parochial schools, and becoming acquainted with numerous sister teachers,-an experience which she enjoyed, the more, because she does not happen to be a Catholic.
In 1933 Laura joined the staff of the Rand MeNally Company where she was assigned to the editing of children's books. She edited a series of
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readers intended for use in Catholic schools as well as a series intended for public schools.
She had met Charles B. Hugley of the educational staff of the Mac- millan Company. By this time she had spent the greater part of twelve years in Chicago and Mr. Hugley had been there for some twenty years.
Then came a fateful and fortuitous day, the day they decided that it would be a great adventure to own and operate a small town weekly news- paper. Neither one of them knew a thing about it, nor had their experience with publishing houses given them any idea of what skill, tact and judgment would be involved in such an undertaking. But they did know a great deal about farm life and life in small towns; and they were both fed up on what they were doing. They decided to get out.
They wanted to settle down in a pleasant town, preferably one with traditions and background, yet one not too far away from a city which would offer them definite cultural advantages. And they hit on Somerset, Ohio and the Somerset Press.
Somerset is an hour's drive from Columbus where they could see good theatres, hear good concerts and lectures, see football games, and renew old social acquaintances. So they bought the Somerset Press; paid for it in cash, resigned from their respective positions, gave a month's notice, and set about leaving the big town.
Incidentally, when they found time, they went around to a minister and were married.
They found a house in Somerset, more than a century old which had fallen into neglect. They took a lease on the house, had it brought up to modern standards of comfort, convenience and sanitation; then furnished it with antiques acquired by scouring the country side. It was a proud day when pictures of the Hugley house and a description of its restoration appeared in The American Home.
Both Charles and Laura Mengert dearly love running their paper. They have been making a comfortable living and more, they have made a place for themselves in the community.
They give their readers whorthwhile news-not stereotyped stuff, but articles and items of real interest to the community. Last year, for example, they published a special farm edition which won wide spread comment from editors, as has a special educational contest for high school pupils of Perry County. She runs a column for women in which she writes of apple-butter making, quilting, mince meat making, a concert, the new and popular books, a football game, old time fashions. Anything. People send her suggestions for the column, most of them good. She runs a column for children. For a time she wrote original stories under the caption, "In the Doll Shop." On this she won a first prize in the contests of 1937 sponsored by the O.N.W.A.
Helen Wart Huilbert
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They are situated in the center of a good shopping area, and are able to draw advertising from Zanesville, Lancaster and Newark, as well as Somerset.
This seems a good place to break off the story of Laura Mengert Hugley, educator, who turned editor. It is not the end, of course. But if it were? What happier ending could any real newspaper addict, man or woman, ask?
HELEN HART HURLBERT
HELEN HART HURLBERT (Mrs. Griswold Hurlbert), president of the Tribune Company and publisher of the Warren Daily Tribune Chronicle, succeeded to these posts in 1936 at the death of her mother, Mrs. Zell Hart Deming. Mrs. Hurlbert had been brought up in the newspaper atmosphere, the only child of her mother, whose outstanding interest was the newspaper which she had built up from a small sheet to a commanding position in the community.
As a little girl in school Helen Hart wrote her first news items and reported children's parties, being trained under her mother's guidance in gathering facts and reporting them. She would accompany a subscription solicitor for the Tribune throughout the county and thus acquired her first experience in circulation. Later she held a daily job on the Tribune Chronicle's society desk.
Mrs. Hurlbert is deeply interested in every department of the news- paper and in every phase of her work thereon. She attends the meetings of the Associated Press, the American Newspaper Publishers Association, the Associated Ohio Dailies and the Inland Daily Press Association, being alert to keep abreast of the problems and progress of the newspaper world.
The Tribune Chronicle total paid daily average circulation for the first six months of the year (1939) is 16,219, the paper going into a manufacturing and farming area approximately 20 miles square.
"A newspaper," says Mrs. Hurlbert, "is unique among businesses in that it contacts every one of its customers daily."
Mrs. Hurlbert is the wife of Griswold Hurlbert, president of the Bostwick Steel Lath Company. Their daughter, Zell Hart Hurlbert, is also enthus- iastically interested in newspaper work and writing and is acquiring practical experience by working during her vacation times in the office, so that she may enter the newspaper business when she has arrived at years of maturity.
HELEN B. JOHN
HELEN B. JOHN is one of the few women in the United States to have served as city editor of a large newspaper. She was born in Zanesville, for many years was general reporter and society editor of the Zanesville
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Signal, was managing editor of the Mckeesport Journal for a time, and was city editor of the Trenton Times in Trenton, N. J. for five years.
She is now doing publicity for Community Chests, Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A. campaigns and her work takes her into every state of the Union.
She was also one of the first suffrage workers in this country and was called upon frequently in political campaigns as a featured speaker in state and national campaigns. She is one of the distinguished women of the county and a descendant of an old pioneer family noted for their patriotism.
ALICE KUEHN
ALICE KUEHN, woman's club editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Sunday feature writer for this paper, has built up an extensive reader fol- lowing through her unusual ability as columnist and editor. She was born in Cleveland, the daughter of August and Christina L. Kuehn attended Baldwin-Wallace College and from 1921 to 1933 was reporter, feature writer and columnist for the Cleveland News. She is an active member of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association and a former president of the Cleveland Women's Press Club.
NEAL WYATT KYLE
NEAL WYATT KYLE, associate editor and advertising manager of The Nelsonville Tribune, Nelsonville, Ohio entered her newspaper work in Ohio with a rich background of experience in literary, business and club activities.
She was born in Jackson, Tennessee, February 10, 1883; was educated in Women's College, Grenada, Mississippi and Oxford, Miss., and lived at dif- ferent times in Arkansas, Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
Her literary career was started in Sarasota, Florida, where she was feature writer on the Sarasota Times and where her first book was written. This was "Mother," a gift booklet and the second was "Florida, The Fascinating," a compilation of historical and descriptive articles about the State of Florida. At this time she also conducted a column in a nature magazine.
While residing in Macon, Ga., Mrs. Kyle served as secretary of the Woman's Department of the Chamber of Commerce, was secretary of the Advertising Club, assistant advertising manager of J. P. Allen Dept. Store and was on the staff of the Macon News conducting a "Polly Goes Shopping" page and an educational column. She taught for a time in the Georgia- Alabama Business College and was president of the Macon Business and Professional Women's Club.
During the World War she was active in the Red Cross and Community Service in connection with Camp Wheeler located near Macon. Parent-
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Teacher Association work and activities in the Macon Music Study Club, as well as solo work in the Christian Church of Macon took up much of her time. Making her first trip to the north, Mrs. Kyle went from Macon. Ga. to Lansing, Michigan where she was assistant to the foreign advertising manager on the Lansing State Journal, also director of the "Peter Rabbit Club" sponsored for boys and girls of Lansing by the Journal.
The next move was made to Defiance, Ohio, where she free-lanced for magazines and conducted a studio of voice culture and was director of Defiance Men's Chorus. She was also active in Parent-Teacher Association work and the Music Study Club.
Cincinnati, Ohio was her home for over a year when she was proof reader for Johnson-Hardin Book Publishing Company. While there she was vice president of the Writers Guild and a member of the Woman's Press Club.
In 1926 Mr. and Mrs. Kyle bought interest in The Somerset Press of Somerset, Ohio, where Mrs. Kyle served as Associate Editor and Advertising Manager, and organized the ROSEGIVERS CLUB conducting it through a column in the Press under the title ROSEGIVERS. For 10 years Mrs. Kyle was connected with the Extension Department of Ohio State University as lecturer, (1926-36).
Mr. and Mrs. Kyle sold their interest in Somerset Press in 1935 and moved to Nelsonville where they publish the Nelsonville Tribune with Mrs. Kyle as associate editor and advertising manager. The ROSEGIVERS CLUB column is a special feature of the Tribune and the Club has grown to a membership of over 1,200 with every State in the Union represented in the membership list, as well as four foreign countries.
Mrs. Kyle is president of the Nelsonville Business and Professional Women's Club, member of the Community Garden Club, Cosmopolitan Club and the Eastern Star and is an active member of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association. She has done some special radio work, at one time was known as "The Lady of the South" in a regular program in Columbus and was a speaker on the Ohio Poetry Day program in 1938.
FLORENCE LA GANKE HARRIS
FLORENCE La GANKE (Mrs. F. Harris) of Cleveland, syndicate writer, newspaper woman and home economics expert, was born at Cleveland, the daughter of Robert Frederick and Lillie Isabelle La Ganke. Her father was of a French Huguenot family, members of which came to this country from Alsace Lorraine.
Florence attended Cleveland schools, then Teachers College, Columbia Uni- versity, from which she received a B.S. degree. She became an instructor at Columbia, then supervisor of home economics in the schools of Oakland, Cal., then dietician of St. Luke's Hospital, Cleveland.
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She was married in 1923 to Frederick Harris, who was born in Lon- don, England. Florence La Ganke entered the newspaper field via the Cleve- land Plain Dealer and later became home economics editor of the Cleveland Press. From this period on she wrote articles that were widely syndicated, also a number of authoritative books dealing with various phases of household science.
Her daily broadcasts are a popular radio feature and her services are in demand as home economics consultant.
Mrs. La Ganke Harris is a member of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Asso- ciation, of Columbus Chapter, Theta Sigma Pi, of the English Speaking Union, the Cleveland Woman's City Club, the American, the Ohio and the Cleveland Home Economics Associations, the Cleveland Child Health Association, the Needlecraft Guild of Cleveland and the Health Education Committee of the Welfare Association.
ETHELYN CHESBROUGH LEWIS
ETHELYN CHESBROUGH LEWIS (Mrs. Frank Stuart Lewis), refutes many of our cherished beliefs. Known as a great beauty, she possesses a brilliant mind and wit. "To be thought dumb just because you are passably good looking, is the fate of any woman," wails Mrs. Lewis, "who is born into the so-called society set. Without the right clothes I was never any better looking than anybody and I have had to live to see what looks I had fade before anybody even suspected that I had an ounce of gray matter."
However that may be, Mrs. Lewis when nearing her eighteenth birthday was chosen because of her beauty to be Queen of Wamba, a magnificent pageant linking the new Toledo in the Western Hemisphere with Old To- ledo, Spain. The Spanish king sent the Marquis de Villalobar to represent his country at the celebration and money was spent like water in Toledo, Ohio to make the event outstanding. That was thirty years ago and no pageant has since excelled Wamba save the Mardi Gras at New Orleans. The writer of this article caught his first glimpse of Ethel Chesbrough as she sat atop the Queen's float in that now historic Wamba procession. So exquisite was she-this raven haired daughter of Abram Chesbrough-with her hauntingly beautiful eyes and her ivory skin that the picture has remained ineffacable. This was in August of 1909. That same October Ethel Chesbrough became the bride of Frank Lewis, son of C. T. Lewis, member of the famous law firm of Doyle & Lewis, corporation lawyers. In a year her first child, Nancy Jane, was born and a year later, a second daughter, whom in disappointment that the baby had not been a son, they named Chesbrough.
Young as she was, Ethel Chesbrough early took things into her own hands. She had rechristened her husband before marriage, giving him as a middle name a family patronymic, Stuart, not handed out at the baptismal font. Her wedding invitations and announcements had gone proudly forth, Frank Stuart Lewis, name destined to become famous in the life of Toledo, and not a little because of the glamor of his wife.
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Born of the valiant Chesbrough stock, her mother the beautiful Belle Brown, daughter of a pioneer Toledo family, Ethel early showed that in- dependence of character and behavior which had led her granfather, Alonzo Chesebrough (note the original spelling) to come to Toledo on his way to the great north woods of Michigan. Lumber people they had always been, and the ways of the woods were an open book to A. Chesebrough. Arriving at nightfall at Toledo's then swank hotel, the Oliver House, this plain woods- man in hip boots and woolen shirt asked the room clerk for bed and lodging. He carried little or no baggage and, as is the way with room clerks, the rough and ready Chesebrough did not look any too welcome a visitor to the young custodian of the inkwell. "You'll have to pay for your room in advance, Mr. Chesebrough," he murmured with insulting emphasis on the first syl- lable of the name. Taking a roll of bills from his pocket so large that it fairly frightened the foolish clerk, Mr. Chesebrough peeled off the top one and proffered it. "Take it out of that," he said succinctly. It was in present parlance a grand note-$1,000-the first probably ever to reach the desk of the Oliver House. From that time on the name of Chesebrough, later changed to its present form of Chesbrough, became synonomous in Toledo for money. Abram Chesbrough, son of the before mentioned Alonzo and father of Ethel, paced off his new holdings in the virgin forests of northern Michigan on foot and there they are today, thousands of acres, the property of Mrs. Lewis and her only sister, Mrs. Paul Kirchmaier, also of Toledo.
Ethel Lewis likes to say she was brought up in a lumber mill town and this is partly true, for each summer the family went to the town of Emerson, Michigan, founded and owned by her father, and lived there. Servants went along, of course, but the food at the camp table eaten with the hungry lum- bermen intrigued small Ethel far more. Perhaps it was from early contacts with these rough but honest and forthright men, that Ethel Chesbrough first acquired the democratic tendencies, which in after life were to lead her far afield from the narrow social set into which she was born.
The Chesbrough family lived at what was known as "The Inn," where the priests trying to convert the lumber workers, the patient nuns, million- aire lumbermen from the East and every type of traveller was made welcome and comfortable for the night, and there was no charge. Emerson is fifteen miles from the railroad, so Mr. Chesbrough early had turned his summer home into an inn where all might find lodging for the night. In this environment little Ethel was perfectly at home-she was the pet of the Inn and grew to love the gentle priests and nuns most of all.
All her married life she has maintained friendships in every strata of society-among newspaper folk, the musical set to which she has pronounced leanings, herself studying voice, piano and harp, and among business and professional people of every type. This same democratic tendency led her early to want to do something herself in the work-a-day world. Possessing a
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