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Margaret Colby Getchell Parsons

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Margaret Colby Getchell Parsons (1891–1970) was an American journalist in the 1920s.[1] Although a features writer, rather than an investigative reporter, she matched her investigative peers in originality and, like them, also wrote on under-reported "women's issues."[2] In long-form articles like "What is Least on which a Working Woman Can Live?" she focused on practical issues, such as women's poverty-level wages.[3] But there were also numerous profiles of brave female role models, including Clara Barton,[4] Joan of Arc[5] and Marie, Romania's last queen, who "fled the fairy tale" to minister to wounded soldiers during World War I.[6]

Margaret Colby Getchell Parsons
The author at aged 16 or 17 in 1908.
The author at aged 16 or 17 in 1908.
Born(1891-08-25)August 25, 1891
Worcester, Massachusetts, US
DiedJanuary 13, 1970(1970-01-13) (aged 78)
Southborough, Massachusetts, US
Pen nameProfessional use of some combination of first, middle and surnames.
OccupationAuthor
EducationWheaton College (Massachusetts), Radcliffe College
GenreJournalist, critic, children's book writer and children's playwright
SpouseEugene Olian Parsons
RelativesDaughter of artist Edith Loring Getchell

In a prolific career, Getchell also wrote for children, and her books, plays and "playlets" stand out for their emphasis on the independence and imagination of her audience, and her dismay that more dramatists weren't adapting plays with children in mind.[7] She argued that children were "natural playwrights," and that making them think would reduce the need for family discipline.[8][9]

In 1929, Getchell, by then known as Parsons, became a full-time writer and book critic for the Worcester-based Sunday Telegram and Evening Gazette where she remained until 1960.[10]

Girl Reporter edit

For the first decade or so of Getchell's career, starting around 1916 when she was hired onto the editorial staff of the Worcester Gazette (now known as the Telegram & Gazette), she began freelancing for other newspapers, first within Massachusetts, then republishing local stories on topics like housing[11] and the local park in other parts of the country.[12][13] By the late teens, she was publishing in newspapers nationwide, and her sometimes eccentric range ran the gamut: from film scores[14] to, more adventurously, the burgeoning aviation industry[15][16] and arctic exploration.[17] But she also wrote on lighter topics, profiling a barber to the stars in a piece called "Famous Men I Have Shaved,"[18] as well as under-reported stories like "Pilots of Industry at Ninety Guide Giant Business."[19] Her takes were frequently inventive, and sometimes also quite compassionate, as evidenced by pieces like "Lip-Reading Folk Get Small Enjoyment from Movies."[20]

Writing on Women
 
A profile of Marie of Romania, a contemporary queen who "fled the fairy tale."
 
A full-page analysis of poverty-level wages for women that fell far below the 1919 minimum.

Children's Books and Plays edit

Early into her career, Getchell was already balancing her journalism for adults with books, stories and plays for children. In Writer: A Monthly Magazine for Literary Workers, she describes already having completed, and sold, a set of plays that could be performed at home as entertainment at holiday parties, with sets and costumes so simple they allowed for improvisation only a year or so out of college.[12] Around that time, she also published three children's books, each in a different genre: The Cloud Bird, a fairy tale adventure, illustrated by Edith Bollinger Price, and featuring a swan, a bear, a fish and other creatures, who appear, willy-nilly, in miniature, on any part of the page in "their" chapter with Dorothy Ann, the little girl heroine whose greatest adventures were at night.[21][22] Her second book Proposal Number Seven features two comedic acts, and a makeshift diagram showing children how to organize their own sets.[23] The third was more commercial in intent, akin to Getchell's holiday and rainy day plays still to come, only Spruce Cone and Bunchberry, as it says in subtitle, is A Campfire Girls Play, with enough parts for a dozen girls, plus casting tips.[12]

Book reviews edit

Getchell went on to write several other children's books, and she became the full-time book editor at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in 1929. She maintained her post at the paper until 1960 when she retired.[10] She died in 1970.[10]

Ivan Sandrof, her successor, memorialized her by writing:

With Maggie Parsons went, possibly, the last of the rugged individualists ... she was old Worcester, a concentrated version, rare as an uncooked beefsteak, quick to speak her mind, highhearted, loud of voice, opinionated, fearless; once heard, never forgotten.[10]

Personal life edit

Getchell and her sister Ruth came from a sophisticated background. Their father Dr. Albert Colby, was a "prominent specialist in throat and lung diseases, and a pioneering treatment of tuberculosis."[24] Their mother Edith Loring Getchell (née Pierce) was a former student of Thomas Eakins, and a prominent artist with an international career whose work has been collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and other major institutions.[25]

One of only two to earn a B.A. from Wheaton College in 1914, the first year they were offering degrees, Getchell later attended Radcliffe.[25][26] In 1921, she married Eugene Olian Parsons, garden editor for the Sunday Telegram and Evening Gazette.[27] Their only child was Carol E. Parsons Rader (1932–2019).[28]

Bibliography edit

  • Spruce, Cone and Bunchberry. A play about an unpleasant family which becomes pleasant when the Camp Fire spirit enters the home. (1916)
  • The Cloud Bird (1916)
  • Proposal Number Seven: A comedy in two acts (1918)
  • Colette of the Red Cross: A play in two scenes for Red Cross juniors. (1919)
  • Jack-i'-the-green and the Petentate of Weaterdom (1920) (as Margaret Colby Getchell.)
  • Red Letter Day Plays (1921)
  • In the Children's Play-house (1923)
  • Ten stirring Bible plays (1927)
  • Good Turns, or Only a Tenderfoot: A boy scout play in three acts (1928)
  • Scoops: A comedy in three acts for female characters (1930)
  • Almost Rehearsal-less Plays; Stunts and Novelty Programs (1931)
  • The Woman's Club Playbook (1935)
  • Off the Old Block: A one act-comedy for all women (1935)
  • A modern Thanksgiving, a play in one act (1937)
  • One Night Stand: five one-act plays for young people (1942)

Collections edit

Gallery edit

  •  
    A 1922 woodcut accompanying a quote in Pennsylvania's Daily Times.
  •  
    A 1917 photo accompanying an interview about children's plays in the Boston Globe.
  •  
    Portrait of Dr. Albert Colby Getchell by Thomas Eakins,1907.
  •  
    Cover of Getchell's 1916 book The Cloud Bird, illustrated by Edith Ballinger Price.
  •  
    An undated etching called "A Windswept Road," by her mother, artist Edith Loring Getchell. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

See also edit

External links edit

References edit

  1. ^ Blakemore, Erin (2020-12-13). "Ione Quinby, Chicago's Underappreciated "Girl Reporter"". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2022-02-18.
  2. ^ "On the "Girl Stunt Reporters" Who Pioneered a New Genre of Investigative Journalism". Literary Hub. 2021-04-16. Retrieved 2022-02-18.
  3. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (May 26, 1919). "What is least on which a Working Woman Can Live?". The Grand Forks Herald.
  4. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (October 12, 1921). "Barton's Birthplace Becomes a Shrine to a Noble Woman's Memory". Boston Evening Transcript.
  5. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (April 6, 1919). "Saint Jeanne d'Arc". The Lexington Herald. p. 2.
  6. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (April 6, 1919). "Beautiful Queen Didn't Live Happily Ever After". Cleveland Plain Dealer.
  7. ^ "Children Are Natural Playwrights". The Meridien Daily Journal. Dec 19, 1921. p. 5.
  8. ^ "Fits Play to the Family". The Boston Globe. Feb 11, 1917. p. 44.
  9. ^ "She Prescribes Play Acting for Active Children". The Daily Times. Jan 13, 1922.
  10. ^ a b c d Worcester Historical Museum (July 14, 2020). "A Pretty Powerful Woman". Facebook.
  11. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (November 18, 1919). "City Solves its Housing Problem". Grand Forks Herald.
  12. ^ a b c "The Writer". Writer Magazine: v. 1887. ISSN 0043-9517.
  13. ^ Worcester Chamber of Commerce; Worcester Board of Trade (1901). "The Worcester magazine: devoted to good citizenship and municipal development": v. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (June 13, 1920). "A Great Field in Cinema Music Remains Unexplored". The Washington Herald.
  15. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (July 27, 1919). "The Dirible's Advantages Over the Plane in Commerce". The Jackson Citizen Patriot.
  16. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (August 3, 1919). "Dirigible, Not Airplane to Be Commercial Flier for Transatlantic Trips". The Milwaukee Journal. p. 10.
  17. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (February 1, 1920). "How Camera Captured the Midnight Sun on Horizon". The Sunday Oregonian.
  18. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (January 17, 1926). "Famous Men I Have Shaved". The Venturer.
  19. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (November 28, 1920). "Pilots of Industry at Ninety Guide Giant Business". The Sunday Oregonian. p. 7.
  20. ^ Getchell, Margaret C. (February 15, 1920). "Lip-Reading Folk Get Small Enjoyment from Movies". The Morning Oregonian. p. 2.
  21. ^ "The cloud bird". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
  22. ^ "School arts". 1901: v. ISSN 0036-6463. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  23. ^ Parsons, Margaret Colby Getchell; Parsons, Mrs Getchell (1918). Proposal Number Seven: A Comedy in Two Acts. Penn Publishing Company.
  24. ^ Rennie, Dorothy B. (September 1968). "The Portraiture of Thomas Eakin". North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin. XIII (1): 16.
  25. ^ a b "Dr. and Mrs. Getchell Observe Golden Wedding". The Boston Globe. April 23, 1936. p. 19.
  26. ^ "Wheaton College Gives Degrees for First Time". The Boston Herald. Jun 18, 1914.
  27. ^ Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Index, 1901-1955 and 1966-1970 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
  28. ^ "Carol E. Rader Obituary (1932 - 2019) MetroWest Daily News". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
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