Beardsworth, Ada Bantz, 1877-1965. Ada Bantz Beardsworth papers [manuscript], 1874-1953 (bulk 1897-1924).
Title:
Ada Bantz Beardsworth papers [manuscript], 1874-1953 (bulk 1897-1924).
The collection consists primarily of Bantz and Beardsworth family papers, including letters, diaries, ledgers, and photographs. They reflect the life of Ada Bantz,a strongminded, artistically talented, and independently oriented Virginia woman and her husband, the musician Tom Beardsworth. Topics include Ada B. Beardworth's search for employment, family troubles, health, social life, travels,long engagement and evenutal marriage and struggle with social conventions. Of interest is correspondence with her gay godson and cousin William Baker Powell, an advertising salesman, author of home decorating articles, and friend of Gene Tunney, Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Topics also include Tom Beardsworth's positions at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind, Mary Baldwin Seminary, the Virginia Female Institute, Camp Terra Alta, the Stonewall Band Brigade and the Staunton Military Academy and tours and performances in numerous Virginia cities including Charlottesville. Other topics include current events,particularly the election of 1896, Spanish American war, World Wars I and II, and the depression; fashion trends; life in Winchester and Staunton, Va.; student life at Amherst; employment with Sherwin-Williams, advertising as a career, women owned businesses. There are also mentions of Allen Caperton Braxton, Barnett McFee Clinedinst, Lady Duff Gordon, Leonard Hanna, Jr., Cole Porter, John Powell, Maggie Teyte, Gene Tunney,and Woodrow Wilson. There are brief references to birth control and abortion, the bicycling fad, ping pong, a flood in Winchester in 1902, the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901, the inaugurations of William McKinley and Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson as president, Walter Damrosch's orchestra, the Pan American Exposition, the Jamestown Expostion, the New York Worlds Fair, voyage to Europe on the RMS Mauretania, the stock market crash, Cole Porter musicals and nostalgia for the "good old days of slavery." Of interest are letters from William Glass and Sidney Moss, University of Virginia students, 1892-1895, 1912-1913, regarding student life and misbehavior, the Glee Club and the Rotunda fire and aftermath. Correspondents include: Richard E. Byrd, Henry LaT Cavenaugh, John Warwick Daniel, George Dewey, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Frank R. Gillis, William Wood Glass, Jr., Curtis Guild, James Hay, Louis E. McComas, Perry L. Miles, Alexander M. Patch, Fitz-John Porter, William Baker Powell, and Charles "Broadway" Rouss. Several of these letters are routine replies to requests for patronage.
ArchivalResource:
circa 9000 items.
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