Ira Rich Kent (1876-1945), known as Rich, was born on October 28, 1876, in Calais, Vermont. He graduated from Goddard Seminary in Barre, Vermont, and Tufts College in Boston. Rich was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and became a lifetime trustee of Tufts as well as a member of their executive committee. After graduation from Tufts, he settled in Boston and began to pursue a career in writing and publishing. He was first employed as a writer and editor at The Youth Companion, a monthly newspaper-format magazine offering serialized stories for young people. He remained there from 1900 to 1925, eventually becoming editor-in-chief. He was then hired by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, where he served as managing editor until his death on November 9, 1945. Mr. Kent was a member of the St. Botolph Club, the Lake Mansfield Trout Club, and the Vermont Association of Boston, among others.
In 1912, Ira Rich Kent married Louise "Lulie" Andrews, daughter of Mary Sophronia Edgerly and Walter E. Andrews of Brookline, Massachusetts, where Rich and Lulie also settled. Walter Andrews, born in England, was partner in Charles S. Storrow Company, a cotton trading company in Boston. Lulie had two siblings: Katharine Mary (1881-?) (Mrs. Henry Edgeworth Frick of Montclair, N.J.), and Oliver (1888-1923) Andrews. Lulie Kent, a Boston debutante, graduated from Simmons College School of Library Science in Boston, and became a noted author. Her writing career began as a newspaper columnist for the Boston Traveler under the pen name, "Theresa Tempest." Her early books were historically-based adventures targeting young readers under the rubric, "He Went with...(Marco Polo, John Paul Jones, etc.)." She later assumed the persona of "Mrs. Appleyard" to write a series of New England cookbooks, beginning with Mrs. Appleyard's Year in 1941. Her autobiography, Mrs. Appleyard and I, was published in 1968. Lulie Kent and their three children, Elizabeth "Kenty," Hollister "Sam," and Rosamond "Posy," spent summers and vacations at the "white house" at Kents Corner in Calais, Vermont. Louise Kent's ability to capture the essence of affluent Boston life and intermingle it with the down-home qualities of rural Calais made Mrs. Appleyard a tremendously appealing character, and her illustrious writing career reaped the benefits. She enjoyed a long and lucrative relationship with her husband's publishing firm, Houghton Mifflin. Mrs. Kent was a trustee of the Vermont Historical Society in the 1950s and orchestrated the preservation of the Kent Tavern as a museum, with financial support from A. Atwater Kent, radio magnate and cousin of her husband. Louise Andrews Kent died on August 5, 1969.
From the description of Kent family papers : series V : generation IV, 1838-1971 1880-1969. (Vermont Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 726871219
