by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Returning for this second part of a post looking at greater Los Angeles women listed in the sole edition of Women of the West, published in August 1928, we pick up with Eleanor Barnes, whose work as a journalist has been mentioned in a few prior posts here. Not quite 30, Barnes was from Pennsylvania, but came to Los Angeles as a toddler.
A graduate of the city’s Polytechnic High School, she worked for almost a decade as a feature writer for the Los Angeles Record and then became the drama editor for the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, though she occasionally did feature work there, as well. Her bio added that she wrote storylines for First National Pictures as well as articles for syndication and as a contributor to magazines and periodicals.
Lucy Seaton Bartlett was the wife of artist Dana Bartlett, with the couple moving to the Angel City in 1915. She was a music teacher and worked at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, then readying for its move to Westwood. It was added in her bio that she had a special California teaching credential for teaching at the high school level.
Minnie M. Barton, born in 1881 in Kansas, was a former schoolteacher who had the distinction of being the chief probation officer for women parolees and opened the Minnie Barton Training Hoe for troubled women sent to her by the courts, as well as being the founder of the Big Sister League and the Bide-A-Wee home for poor mothers and their children. Married and a mother of three sons and a daughter, Barton was president of the city schools P.T.A. and an organist for her Presbyterian Church.
Pasadena resident Alice Haines Baskin, was a New York City native who resided in Texas and New Mexico before moving to this area in the early Twenties. She was the author of eleven children’s books and a 1922 novel, Flower of the World. She was known in the Crown City as a dramatic critic for the city’s Star-News, having held that position since her arrival in town, and for her sketches about the Golden State for the Los Angeles Times. She also contributed articles, poems and short stories to magazines.
Another resident of that city was Alice Coleman Batchelder, a Nebraska native whose husband Ernest made the celebrated Batchelder tiles that were very common regional houses during the early 20th century. She was a pianist who had “concertized” and was the promoter of the Coleman Chamber Concerts presented at the city’s beautiful and still operating Community Playhouse.
Annie Mottram Craig Batten hailed from Canada and was a 35-year resident of California, who graduated from the Toronto Conservatory and College of Music and became a professional singer and vocal instructor. A member of the faculty at the University of Southern California’s School of Music, Batten also taught summer sessions for a state teachers’ college at Santa Barbara and was a soloist for many women’s clubs.
Hollywood resident and New York state native Maud Gage Baum was the wife of one of the most famous American writers of the era, the late L. Frank Baum of the Wizard of Oz fame. Coming with her husband and children to the Golden State seventeen years prior, Baum was a Cornell University graduate and it was noted that her mother was an early woman suffrage figure associated with Susan B. Anthony and others. She was the writer of In Other Lands Than Ours and was prominent in clubs, including the Hollywood Woman’s Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
A civic leader of note was Ida Bellows, born in 1859 in Wisconsin and who came west twenty-three years before the publication was issued. She was a member of the Los Angeles Housing Commission from 1918-1922 and of the Board of Freeholders which created the charter that was drawn up the following year. In 1926, she was on the budget committee of the Community Chest clearinghouse for charitable giving and Bellows served as president of the Woman’s City and Ebell clubs, both very prominent in the Angel City.
One of the few Orange County denizens in the pages of the book was Buena Park resident Katharine Standefer Berkey. A native of Texas, she moved to California thirty-five years prior and the married mother of three served as the Buena Park District librarian since 1925. A member of the state and county library associations, Berkey also belonged to her city’s woman’s club and was a trustee of the grammar school and former president of its P.T.A.
Ada S. Blake was principal of the prominent Marlborough School for girls, founded in 1889 and still in operation. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and a graduate of Radcliff College At Cambridge, Blake was the head of the Louisville Collegiate School in the Kentucky metropolis and of Dongan Hall on Staten Island, New York before taking the reins at Marlborough in 1922. She was a member of the Headmistresses Association of the Pacific Coast and of the local Woman’s Athletic Club, Women’s University Club and Club Casa del Mar.
Gertrude Richards Bliss, who hailed from Wisconsin and was a 9-year resident of the Golden State, residing in Hollywood and working as a rare example of a woman periodontist. The mother of two children was a specialist in pyorrhea and prophylaxis and “has lectured considerably” while also maintaining a passion in English literature and was “very much interested in ceramics.” A member of the Federation of American Women Dentists, Bliss also belonged to the Los Angeles Business and Professional Club and the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
One of the more famous entrants was Carrie Jacobs Bond, who was from Janesville, Wisconsin and lived in California for nearly twenty years. A widow with a son, Bond was a prominent composer, but also owned her own namesake publishing company, a distinctive element to her career. Some of her songs, dating back to 1903, were listed as well as her authorship of a few books were provided and it was noted that she was active with the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Community Chorus, and a play about Jesus Christ. Her many memberships included in the obvious musical ones, but also press, writing, and general women’s clubs, as well as the “Portland Carrie Jacobs Bond Club.”
Jessie Arms Botke, a Chicago native came to the coast in 1919 with her Dutch painter and etcher husband, Cornelis, and son and brought her artistic talents with her, though she’d just very recently moved to Los Angeles. The painter was well-received, frequently exhibited and oft-honored in her hometown and then continued her work in Carmel and Santa Paula, the latter being where her family owned a ranch. After settling in the Angel City, she exhibited at the well-known Stendhal Gallery, but returned to Santa Paula where she continued her artistic endeavors and was known for fascination with bird subjects (flamingos, peacocks, swans and more.)
Sarah Coleman Bragdon was born in Santa Clara, next to San Jose, being a rare California native in the book, but moved to Pasadena when she was six years old. There she became known as a pianist and teacher of that instrument and was member of the Tuesday Musicale, while she composed many songs about the Crown City. The book did not mention it, but Bragdon was the sister of Alice Batchelder with the two being the children of a journalist with the Pasadena Star and a teacher of English literature and history at Throop Institute, now CalTech—incidentally, it was the father who was with the newspaper.
Another Pasadena notable was Ada Brayton, a Nebraska native who had the distinction of being on the staff of the Mount Wilson Observatory, working in its Astronomical Computer Department of Stella Spectroscopy. Beyond that notable work, she was an accredited teacher and a Spanish interpreter and translator and member of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico. Her memberships included the American Astronomical Society and women’s professional clubs, among others.
Elizabeth Bream was from near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of the famous Civil War battle where President Abraham Lincoln gave his celebrated address. A recent arrival in Pasadena, settling there in 1925, she was a graduate of the teachers’ college in her home state and then at the national Young Women’s Christian Association training school in New York City. A teacher of high school mathematics, she was interested in the welfare of adolescent girls, and was on the Woman’s Commission on Girls’ Work as well as the Board of Religious Education in the Crown City.
Canadian-born Anna Beecroft Briggs of Los Angeles was an organist and choir, but was known as a playwright and writer with one-act plays winning the Southern California Woman’s Press Club first prize in 1927 and 1928. The widow and mother of two wrote articles, editorials, essays and poems for such major journals as Good Housekeeping and Progress Magazine and she was a member of the aforementioned press club, the Drama League and the Versewriters Club.
A prominent woman in Long Beach was Oliver Pearson Brison, who moved to the coastal community in 1923 with her husband and became known as a vocal instructor as well as the choir director at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Brison was in her second year as the head of the Woman’s City Club and was vice-president of the Long Beach Camp Fire Girls. A board member of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, she served on a fifteen-member committee to work for voter-approved bonds for improvements to the Port of Long Beach and the city generally.
The nearby city of Torrance was incorporated in 1921 and its entrant Minnie Singlaub Brooks was from Pennsylvania and a California resident for 21 years. Married and the mother of two, Brooks was “active in all civic and club affairs” and was secretary of the Torrance Hospital Association board of directors, as well as involved in the P.T.A., the Women’s Club and the Cosmos Club of Los Angeles and the International Artists’ Club of Los Angeles.
Though she lived in Oakland and was prominent in the field of the mental capacities of disabled children and a professor of psychology at Mills College, Kate Brousseau, born in Michigan, moved to Los Angeles in her teens, where her father Julius was a well-known attorney and Democratic Party figure. A graduate of Los Angeles High and the state normal school where the Central Public Library is today, Brousseau studied in Minnesota, Chicago, Germany and France before embarking on her career. Late in life, she returned to Los Angeles, where she died in 1938.
Charlotte M. Brown hailed from Eureka among the redwood trees of northwestern California and came to Los Angeles in the mid-1890s. She was a graduate of the Los Angeles Public Library School and three years later became the head librarian for the University of Southern California. She was the founder and president of a regional conference of college and university librarians in 1926-1927 and, beyond her library associations, was a member of the Historical Society of Southern California and the Los Angeles Museum Patrons Association. Later, she was involved with the establishment of USC’s Doheny Memorial Library.
Another local musical figure was Ivadell Langley Brown, a resident of Venice, incorporated into Los Angeles several years prior. A Michigan native, Brown came to the Golden State in the mid-Teens and sang on radio broadcasts as well as served on the audition board for the Hollywood Bowl and as chair of music for the Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club.
Carrie Parsons Bryant, who was from Racine, Wisconsin and a California resident of some four decades, including in Los Angeles from 1895, and was “active in all civic affairs.” She was a member of the Board of Education for the Angel City and the state; a former president of the Los Angeles Civic Association; chair a committee for accreditation of teachers and state institutions; a director of the Los Angeles League of Women Voters; and a member of several prominent organizations. In 1911, she was appointed to the state Board of Charities and Correction, serving as vice-president for a dozen years and was director of the California Psychopathic association and member of the Los Angeles Institute of Criminology.
Mary Stevenson Buchtel was from East Orange, New Jersey and moved to Los Angeles in 1925. Her father, Henry, was a former Colorado governor and ended two decades as chancellor of the University of Denver in 1921. A graduate of that school and Simmons College, Buchtel was educational director at the Denver Y.W.C.A. and assumed the position of executive of city service at the Angel City’s YWCA upon arrival in town.
Olivia Dudley (Mrs. Dr. Ralph Waldo) Bucknam was from Bryant Pond, a little hamlet in the interior of southwestern Maine, and a resident of Hollywood since the mid-1910s. The wife of a well-known physician and surgeon, she was “active in the musical affairs of the community” as well as first vice-president of the state federation of music clubs and of the [Charles Wakefield] Cadman Creative Club and past president of the Opera Reading Club. She was on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Woman’s Committee executive board and on a similar committee for the Los Angeles Grand Opera Association along with the summer concert committee at the Hollywood Bowl.
Lastly, the biography of Georgia Bullock (1878-1957) is somewhat sparse, given her importance in the local legal world. A Chicago native who aspired to be a concert singer but whose hopes were discouraged by her parents as unseemly for a woman, Bullock, a widow with two children, was employed by a law firm and pursued study with night classes at the law school at USC and volunteering in the juvenile probation department. Passing the bar before she earned her law degree in 1914, she served as a deputy district attorney, mainly focused on prostitution cases during her short tenure before she went into private practice and was the first woman member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.
In 1924, the Board of Supervisors appointed her to the county’s women’s court and, despite receiving death threats, moved to the Municipal Court when the women’s court was absorbed. Just prior to the publication of the book, Bullock was named a judge pro-tem of the Superior Court and served from April to July, though her efforts to secure a permanent judgeship were unsuccessful. In 1931, however, she did get the appointment, the first woman to be a Superior Court judge and she remained in that position for almost a quarter of a century.
Despite her accomplishments, the bio merely states:
a well known Los Angeles attorney and for almost four years, Municipal Judge. Very recently sitting in the Superior Court in the civil department. Has established an enviable reputation for handling cases involving domestic relationship, most successfully. The only woman judge in the state.
We’ll look to return with a third part soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for more mini-biographies of local entries in Women of the West.