Smith, Fredrika Shumway

Chicago-area author of books for children and young adults from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Fredrika Shumway was born in Chicago in 1877. In 1900 she married Solomon Albert Smith III (1877-1963), who would later become President and subsequently Chairman of the Board of Chicago's Northern Trust Company. Fredrika Shumway Smith wrote stories for her four children and ten grandchildren, and late in life began to publish. She began by penning children's verse about animals and other stories. They were compiled into four books: The House in the Tree (1941); The Magic Stairway (1942); The Magic City (1949), and Marco the Monkey (1951). From the late 1940s through the 1960s she also wrote novels, mysteries, and biographies for young adults. She wrote a mystery for teenagers called The House and The Tower, and many biographies and histories, including a novel about living in Chicago in the 1890s (Rose and the Ogre, 1948), a history of the Chicago Fire (The Fire Dragon, 1956), and biographies of John Greenleaf Whittier, George Dewey, Isaac Hull, Henry Morton Stanley, and John Charles Fremont. Smith continued to write until 1967, and often donated quantities of her books to schools and libraries. Her books were published primarily by Rand McNally & Company and Christopher Publishing House. She also had some success writing articles for children's magazines. Fredrika Shumway Smith died in 1968.