LINDSAY FAMILY

The eldest of twelve children of Rev. Ephraim Samuel and Frances Elizabeth (Austen) Frazee, Esther Catharine (Frazee) Lindsay (CFL) was born in Fayette County, Indiana, on February 20, 1848. After attending Fayetteville Academy (1857-61), CFL graduated in 1869 as valedictorian from Glendale (Ohio) Female College, and taught there and at Hocker Female College in Lexington, Ky. In June 1875, accompanied by Eudora Lindsay, a friend and fellow teacher at Hocker College, and her brother, Vachel Thomas Lindsay (VTL), a physician from Springfield, Ill., CFL left for a year of travel and study in Europe.

Vachel Thomas Lindsay (VTL) was born in Napoleon, Ky., on August 31, 1843, the son of Martha (Cave) and Nicholas Lindsay, an architect and builder. Educated in public schools in Kentucky, he taught for a time before graduating in 1869 from Miami Medical College in Cincinnati, Ohio. He practiced medicine in Sangamon County, Ill., and in 1871 married Olive W. Crouch ; she died the same year.

Upon their return from Europe, CFL and VTL were married on Thanksgiving Day, 1876. They had six children: Olive Catharine (1877-1957), Nicholas Vachel (1879-1931), Isabel (1881-1888), Esther (1883-1888), Eudora (1885-1888), and Joy (1889-1942). Olive (OLW) married Dr. Paul Wakefield. They had four children, Vachel, Mary, Catharine (the donor of these papers), and Martha, and spent many years in China as missionaries. Nicholas Vachel, known as Vachel Lindsay, was an internationally known poet and author of General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems, among others; he married Elizabeth Connor and had two children, Susan and Nicholas. Joy (JLB) married Cleveland businessman Benjamin Blair and had six children: Vachel, Benita, Catharine, Alexander, Francis, and Harrison. The other three Lindsay girls, Isabel, Esther, and Eudora, died of scarlet fever in 1888.

CFL and VTL lived their entire married life in Springfield, Ill., where CFL came to be a leading figure in the religious, literary, and intellectual life of the city. A member of the First Christian Church, she taught the adult Bible class for 43 years, and was president of the Woman's Missionary Society and a founder and president of the Woman's Missionary Social Union, an organization uniting the efforts of evangelical missionary societies throughout the city. After their marriage, she and VTL traveled widely, to Europe in 1904, 1906, 1908, and 1910, and to China and Japan in 1914. CFL served as a delegate to the Ecumenical Missionary Congress of the World held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910, and wrote for religious papers, including Missionary Tidings , The Christian Century, and The Christian Evangelist . VTL died in Springfield on Sept. 20, 1918.

Her wide-ranging interests are evident in her essays and speeches on such varied topics as the equal education of men and women, woman's right to preach publicly, Jews in the United States, the development of American literature, and the sculpture of Michelangelo. She gave some of the speeches to the Authors' Club or the Springfield Woman's Club. In 1920 CFL and her son Vachel traveled to England, where they met John Masefield, Robert Graves, and many other literary figures. She died in Springfield on February 1, 1922.

From the guide to the Papers, 1855-1941, 1980, 1993, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)