Saturday, July 13, 2013
Herriman Saturday
Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons
Friday, July 12, 2013
Sci-Friday starring Adam Chase
Adam Chase (c) renewed 2013 by Russ Morgan. All rights reserved.
Adam Chase strip #29, originally published December 18 1966. For background on the strip and creator, refer to this post.
Labels: Adam Chase Sci-Friday
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Ink-Slinger Profiles: L.W. Ford
Lorenzo Warner Ford was born in Walworth, New York, in December 1866. His full name was reported in the Pawling Chronicle (New York), September 26, 1935. His birth date was recorded in the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, and his birthplace was mentioned in the Syracuse Herald (New York), May 15, 1925.
In the 1870 census, he was the youngest of eight children born to Loami and Jane. His father was a farmer. They lived in Palmyra, New York.
The 1880 census recorded him, his widow mother and three siblings in Walworth, New York. Information regarding his education and art training has not been found.
The Herald said Ford started at that paper in 1891. He was an artist, according to the 1892 New York State Census, and resided with his wife, Cora, son, Leon and mother in Syracuse, New York.
The 1900 census showed that he remained in Syracuse but at another address, 1109 Spring Street, with his wife and two sons, Glen and Ellsworth. Ford continued work as a newspaper cartoonist.
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Syracuse Herald 3/18/1900
The Evening Telegram (Syracuse, New York), June 2, 1902, noted the passing of his wife: “Mrs. Cora J. Ford, wife of L.W. Ford, died yesterday at the family home, [illegible] Baker avenue at 37 years of age. The funeral will be held at 1:30 o’clock tomorrow afternoon from the family home.” The Herald said: “…Mr. Ford left The Herald upon the death of his wife, in order that his two little sons should be near his relatives, who lived near Cortland. He took up Chautauqua work and afterwards was employed by the Evening World.”
He was portrayed in a cartoon (upper right corner) published in the Luyceumite & Talent, September 1911.
Cartoonist’s View of Life Will Be Ford’s Subject
When L.W. Ford, the noted cartoonist, formerly with the Syracuse Herald and other papers appears at the Auditorium Saturday night under the auspices of the Young Woman’s Association of Butte, special interest will attach to the occasion because Mr. Ford does not limit his entertainment to drawing pictures for the amusement of his audience, but lectures upon life from the viewpoint of the cartoonist. He will take for his subject “The Panorama of Life.” Sunday afternoon he will lecture again in the Auditorium upon “The Moral Cartoon in Modern Parables as Applied to Practical Christianity.” Mr. Ford is on his vacation trip and lecturing in all of the larger cities of the West.
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Anaconda Standard 11/16/1911
In 1913 and 1914 he drew cartoons, such as Broadway Ballads and Bobbie, His Dog and the Dogcatcher, for the New York Evening World. The Syracuse Herald, September 9, 1914, reported Ford’s change of careers.
Former Herald Artist Enters the Ministry
L.C. [sic] Ford Accepts Pastorate of a Prosperous Baptist Church Near New York.
Readers of The Herald of ten or fifteen years ago will be interested to learn that Lorenzo C. [sic] Ford, The Herald cartoonist for years, has just entered the Baptist ministry, for which he studied as a young man before taking up newspaper illustration.
At the time when he was associated with The Herald Mr. Ford was one of the most noted political cartoonists of his day. He had a marvelous knack of catching a likeness and a pencil that could depict a situation in a manner calculated to arouse interest and amusement. His cartoons dealing with State, national and international issues were widely copied and be ranked as one of the prominent cartoonists of the State. Governor Roosevelt declared that no man had ever succeeded in caricaturing him and catching his likeness as well as Ford, and wrote him a complimentary letter after which the artist sent him the original drawings of several of his most widely copied Roosevelt pictures, which the Colonel had bound with a number of others.
Mr. Ford left The Herald upon the death of his wife, in order that his two little sons should be near his relatives, who lived near Cortland. He took up Chautauqua work and afterwards was employed by the Evening World.
His sons are now in Oberlin college and a short time ago, Mr. Ford wrote to friends here that he was looking for some work in which he could settle down and make a home for his boys during vacation and when they had concluded their studies. On Monday his brother-in-law, Guy C. Taylor of Cortland, received a letter stating that through the influence of wealthy friends in New York he had received the offer of a charge at the flourishing Baptist church just outside the limits of Greater New York which would furnish him with congenial work and a comfortable income. The letter said that further details would shortly follow.
Ford passed away May 12, 1925, at his home in Wingdale, New York. His death was reported in the Syracuse Herald, May 15:
Lorenzo W. Ford
A career of large usefulness has ended in the death in the village of Wingdale, N.Y., of Lorenzo W. Ford. For twelve years prior to 1903 he was on the staff of The Herald as artist and cartoonist. He came to this newspaper from his native town, Walworth, Wayne County, after some preliminary experience in sketching for commercial enterprises, and began what proved to be a life of pioneering. Thirty-four years ago newspaper illustration was in its infancy, few publications have adventured in what was then a new field. The ambitions and the talents of “Loren” Ford found opportunity for expression and development with a pioneering newspaper and an extension in the path of progress was charted.
Subsequently Mr. Ford was seen and heard on the Chautauqua circuit, where his chalk talks were enjoyed by thousands in different parts of the country, and later—still the pioneer and adventurer in fresh fields—he became a clergyman, built a church, and with this he continued his life of service.
Few of Mr. Ford’s associates on the staff of The Herald remain. To those the news of his death is one of personal sorrow which is assuaged by the remembrance of a kindly personality, an artistic soul.
His death was covered in the Fulton Patriot (New York), May 20, 1925:
Ford—Died at his home at Wingdale, Dutchess county, N.Y., May 12th, Rev. Lorenzo W. Ford, aged 68 [sic] years. He is survived by his widow and two sons, Dr. Glenn R. Ford and Alger Ford. Funeral services were held at Wingdale on Friday and interment made at that place.
The deceased will be remembered by Fultonians. In 1903 he lived in this city; later he removed to Syracuse and was cartoonist for the Syracuse Herald. In 1914 he became a Baptist clergyman and has been pastor of the Baptist church at Wingdale for 11 years. He died suddenly from cardiac conditions that has suffered from for several years.
The Pawling Chronicle, May 23, 1925, had this article:
Resolutions of Respect
In Memory of Brother Lorenzo W. Ford, who Died May 12th 1925
Once again a Brother Mason, having completed the designs written for him on life’s trestle board, has passed through the portals of Eternity and entered the Grand Lodge of the New Jerusalem and hath received, as his reward, the white stone with the new name written thereon,
And whereas, The all-wise and merciful Master of the universe has called from labor to refreshments our beloved and respected brother,
And whereas, He having been a true and faithful brother of our beloved Order, therefore be it
Resolved, That Harlem Valley Lodge, No. 827, F. & A. M., of Pawling, N.Y., in testimony of her loss, be draped in mourning for thirty days and that we tender to the family of our deceased brother our sincere condolence in their deep affliction and that a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family.
Hiram C. Carroll, Emery G. Cole, James Cavanagh, Committee.
Ten years later the Chronicle, September 26, 1935, reported his wife’s passing and her bequest:
Dover Churches Left Bequests by Mrs. Martin
Estate of $10,000. Divided Between Sons and Local Friends
Two Dover churches and a number of residents in Pawling, Dover and Wingdale received bequests in the will of Mrs. Anne Tabor Martin, formerly of Wingdale, who died Sept. 14th in Roxbury. The will was filed for probate with Surrogate Gleason last Thursday. The estate is valued at more than $10,000. Dr. Glenn R. Ford, of Endicott and John E. Mack are joint executors.
One fund of $2,500 is bequeathed to the Dover First Baptist church as the Lorenzo Warner Ford Memorial Fund, in memory of Mrs. Ford’s husband, the late Rev. Lorenzo W. Ford. This fund is bequeathed to “further the work begun by my beloved husband in connection with the Community House erected by my said husband and to aid and improve the social as well as the religious life of the community of Wingdale through the said Community House.”
A chronological list of Ford’s cartoons in the Evening World.
October 18, 1913; October 20, 1913; October 23, 1913; October 27, 1913; October 29, 1913; November 3, 1913; November 7, 1913; November 11, 1913; November 14, 1913; November 18, 1913; November 20, 1913; November 22, 1913
Good Intentions
January 2, 1914
A Modern Parable
January 9, 1914
The Pace That Kills—and Kills
January 13, 1914
Bobbie, His Dog and the Dogcatcher
January 23, 1914; January 26, 1914; January 29, 1914; January 31, 1914; February 2, 1914; February 10, 1914; February 12, 1914; February 14, 1914; February 17, 1914; February 19, 1914
Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Obscurity of the Day: Broadway Ballads
Here's a delightfully witty series by cartoonist L.W. Ford titled Broadway Ballads. The panel series, which offered off-the-wall ideas for novelty songs, ran sporadically in the New York Evening World from October 18 to November 22 1913.
I rarely get to say anything positive about features that use poetry. It is almost always horrifically bad (at least to my ear). So I delight to say that I really, really enjoyed the verses that go along with the ersatz songsheets in this series. Hip-hip-hoorah for the versifier!
Mr. Ford only produced three known series, all of them for the Evening World, all printed in late 1913 to early 1914. What became of this promising cartooning talent? Well, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow, and Alex Jay's Ink-Slinger Profile to find out.
Labels: Obscurities
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Ink-Slinger Profiles: T.S. Allen
His father was the head of the household in 1880, and he had four younger siblings. Residing with them were Allen’s maternal grandmother and aunt. They lived on East Third Street in Lexington. Of his childhood and education, the The Morning Herald (Lexington, Kentucky), May 18, 1902 said in its article, “Kentuckians Who Have Won Fame in New York”:
Two artists [Carl Schultze was the other] popular with Greater New York readers of the metropolitan newspapers are simon pure Kentuckians. One is Thomas S. Allen, whose studies of child life in the slums are so clever as to have won him the title, “The Phil May of America.”
Mr. Allen’s autobiography is Allenesque. “To begin,” he says, “I was born just as ordinary mortals are. This interesting event took place thirty two years ago [1870] on my grandfather’s farm near Lexington, Ky., now the property of Major Thomas, the well known horseman. From my grandfather I inherited a love of saddle horses, which, alas! the business of comic picture-making has never enabled me to gratify, and a very fine taste for whisky which I have gratified as time and opportunity permitted.”
With much protest against the use of the singular pronoun, for he is a genuinely modest man, Mr. Allen continued: “When I was a little lad I lived for four or five years in Louisville, where my father practiced law with his brother, Major Bryant Allen, and after that lived in Lexington. At Lexington I was a pupil of James Lane Allen, the novelist. I have three gold medals he gave me. I was a student of the Kentucky University, where I stood fairly well, I believe, in English and the classics, but like many another great man whose name has gone sounding down the corridors of time gave no particular sign of that mighty genius which has since set the world on fire.
“I read law in my father’s office for a while, and a very brief while it was, and then drifted into newspaper reporting in Chicago and Spokane, Wash., and then came to New York and wrote jingles and jokes for Judge and Truth for several years. Encouraged by the late Bernard Gillam, of Judge, and Mr. P. W. Arthur, once editor of Truth, I began to make my own sketches to go with my jokes, and so gradually developed into the most wonderful artist you know. Most of my stuff has to do with the little street gamins of New York. Their lives interest me because they are the saddest and bravest I know.”
In Life magazine, April 13, 1911, Allen elaborated on his early writing career:
“When I came on to New York I did not begin my career as an artist at once,” he said, as he graciously offered us a thousand-dollar Davenport couch, which was covering one of the eight-thousand-dollar rugs he obtained at the Yerkes sale. “I began as a writer.”
“Did you write novels or epics?” we asked.
“No. My ambition was higher. I wanted a more catholic form of expression. So I wrote jokes.”
We signified our admiration by an appropriate smile.
“But the trouble with jokes is that they must necessarily be anonymous. In other words, I was furnishing all the brains and the man who illustrated the joke was signing his name to the picture and getting the credit. All he did was to carry out my idea.”
We bowed appreciatively in consonance with his deep reasoning.
“And so I determined to do the pictures myself. I did forty of them, and one day took them to Life’s old office in Twenty-third Street. But my courage failed me. Besides, I had doubts as to the strength of the elevator to carry them up. And so I gathered together all of my available resources and invested in enough postage to mail them to the editor. Then I waited.”
“In the usual despair, we presume.”
“Hope, mingled with despair. They all came back—but one. It was entitles ‘The Young Girl Gazed Into Vacancy.’ By the way, it has never yet been published.”
“We are saving it for our special number entitled ‘Great Beginnings.’...
The December 14, 1902, Morning Herald, reported an incident by Allen’s Kentucky University classmate, Mr. R. D. Norwood:
During class one time–it was perhaps in physics–he drew on the fly leaf of his book a group picture of the faculty going a fishing. Prof. C. L. Loos, the venerable president, was dressed in kilts, and the other members of the faculty were dressed in children's clothes. So perfect were the characteristics that each individual in the picture was easily recognized. Mr. Allen was then 15 or 16 years of age.
William H. Walker and Carl Schultze were the other classmates mentioned in the article. When asked about his art training, Allen said, in the Life interview: “Well, I studied for several years on the Sunday comic supplements of the daily papers.”
The exact dates of his time in Chicago and Spokane, and his move to New York City are not known. He was in New York in the early 1890s and married to Minnie Clark. Their daughter, Genevieve, was born in New York on May 23, 1893, according to the Social Security Death Index. At the time, his parents lived in Olympia, Washington. The Olympian, March 27, 1894 said: “Tom Allen, son of Mr. and Mrs. T.N. Allen, is making an enviable reputation as a sketch artist. He is the author of many of the caricatures in Judge.” Around 1897, he was on the staff of the Hearst newspaper, New York Journal, which published his first kid cartoon October 2, 1897. His Adonis Jimmy was a panel with a recurring character; it ran in the Journal from August 31 to November 15, 1898. A photo of Journal staff artists is here.
He was one of eight artists pictured (top photo) in Broadway Magazine, November 1898. Lain and Healy’s Brooklyn Directory 1898 had this listing: “Allen Thos. S. artist h 275 Carlton av”. He lived seven blocks west of Pratt Institute.
The Blue Pencil Club was a newspapermen’s club formed in October 1899; Allen was a founding member, according to the Sunday Telegram, October 15, 1899. The publication of the first issue of Blue Pencil Magazine was announced in the Sunday Telegram, December 17, 1899; a volume of 1900 issues is here.
According to American Newspaper Comics, Allen’s Them Kids ran from March 11, 1900 to December 29, 1901. After a hiatus, it was revived as Just Kids, from February 13, 1903 to June 3, 1905. A title change to When The World Is Young lasted from June 6, 1905 to May 18, 1906. Then it switched back to Just Kids from November 8, 1906 to May 18, 1907. He left Hearst to join Joseph Pulitzer’s The World which continued his kid cartoons September 26, 1907 to October 13, 1908. Allen left The World, which still had plenty of his cartoons to publish, for the NEA. A new run of kid cartoons started August 14, 1908 and ended in spring 1910. In all, he produced nearly two dozen panel and strip series, including Adam and Eve and Lucky Mike.
In the Literary Collector, September 1903, literary critic Percival Pollard wrote a tribute to the late Phil May and took a swipe at Allen.
Our debt of gratitude to May for the lift he gave black-and-white art in the general and critical estimation is so great that we can afford to forgive him for unconsciously being the cause of much art that was superfluous. When his style first began to attract attention, its superficial mannerisms were at once seized by many lesser artists. They forgot that in his work there was much that had been eliminated to save the essential; they fancied it was mere outline work, easy, yet effective. Some of these imitators owed their daily bread in this way to May for years, notably one American illustrator, T.S. Allen.
One of his drawings was published in How to Draw: A Practical Book of Instruction in the Art of Illustration (1904), and Caricature: Wit and Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song and Story (1911).
Life 4/13/1911
Allen has not been found in the 1910 census. In that year, Sandy Hill changed its name to Hudson Falls. The Olympia Daily Recorder (Washington), December 30, 1914, reported his daughter’s marriage:
Granddaughter of Mrs. T.M. [sic] Allen Weds
Announcements have been received here of the marriage of Miss Genevive [sic] Allen to Mr. Rolin [sic] Trumbull Wright of Rockledge, Fla., announcements coming from Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stamps Allen. The bride is a granddaughter of Mrs. T.M. Allen, widow of the late Judge Allen of this city.
Rockledge became his winter home, as noted in the Troy Times Record (New York), October 7, 1918: “After spending the summer as guests of their daughter, Mrs. Rollin T. Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas S. Allen have returned to their winter home at Rockledge, Fla.”; and the Troy Times, June 14, 1919: “After spending the winter at their cottage at Rockledge, Fla., where they have an orange grove, Mr. and Mrs. T.S. Allen have returned to town to spend the summer with Miss Genevieve Clark.”
In the 1920, 1930 and 1940 censuses, he was recorded at Rockledge on River Drive, in the same house as his daughter’s family. He owned a fruit grove. The 1940 census said he had two years of college. Allen passed away November 25, 1940. His death was reported the following day in the Times Record:
Former Resident of Hudson Falls Dies at Home in Florida
Thomas S. Allen, 71, creator of the newspaper comic “Just Kids,” and a former resident of Hudson Falls, died yesterday afternoon at his home in Rockledge, Fla., after a short illness. He had resided in Hudson Falls until about 12 years ago when he moved to Florida.
He is survived by his widow, the former Minnie Clark of Hudson Falls; a daughter, Mrs. Rollin T. Wright of Rockledge, Fla.; two grandsons, two brothers and two sisters.
His wife, Minnie, passed away in 1959. Both were buried in Union Cemetery, near Hudson Falls, in the section and lot with her parents and siblings.
Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles
Comments:
TS Allen was my Great Great Grandfather. My family still owns the house in Rockledge, FL where he lived at the end of his life. I am an artist as well. Thank you for maintaining and sharing this history!
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Monday, July 08, 2013
Obscurity of the Day: On the Sidewalks of New York
Since I know that Allen's first non-series cartoons for the weekday Journal appeared in October 1897, it appears that this series is, by a far piece, his earliest. Worse, if the numbering on these samples is correct, the presumably weekly series would have started no later than October 3, or even sooner if a week were missed here and there, which was likely in those days. That puts Allen's arrival date back some. Too bad these panels either didn't appear in the microfilm, or escaped the eyes of the indexer, as a start date for Allen's first series, and perhaps his career at the Journal, would be nice to have. Yet another item for my "to be researched" list. Oh well. Good to have job security.
A big thanks to Cole Johnson for the samples!
Labels: Obscurities
Comments:
WOW-- a prelude to mayhem. (I knida hope that agitated Tiger gets that little bastard for screwing with the poor elephant) Is there any way you can post a few more of these sometime?
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# posted by 
: 7/08/2013 8:59 AM
: 7/08/2013 8:59 AM Sunday, July 07, 2013
Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics
