Archive of photographs, manuscript notes & scrapbook

Item Details

Warren OH, Zell Hart Deming, 1924-1936

very good

1920s photograph and scrapbook archive of Zell Hart Deming (1869-1936). Widowed in 1893, then divorced in 1918, Zell rose to prominence as a newspaper editor in Warren OH. By 1924 she held controlling stock in The Warren Tribune which she had edited, and purchased the competing local to create The Warren Tribune Chronicle. She filed her amateur photographs and negatives in the newspaper’s advertising envelopes printed in 1930. In this archive there are ten envelopes that record her travels 1928 to 1936. From other photographic enlargements (Zell annotated on the backs of her images) she began traveling with companion Anne Tod in 1924 (to Algiers), and was with her on a Lafayette French Line West Indies Cruise in March 1936, a month before she died while attending an Associated Press meeting in New York. The most eloquent piece in this archive is a scrapbook diary she made for Anne - “Two Notables Book” - that celebrated their 1926 trip to Europe on the Holland America Line SS Veendam. 34 pages plus covers, 8.5”x11” with a decorated envelope that entwined Anne’s name with hers. Filled with a few photographs but mostly carefully curated images cut from newspapers (including coverage of her as a powerful woman editor) and magazines, with humorous text, and the final hope that they might plan a round the world cruise the next year. On the back of 36 letterheads of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association [Zell Hart Deming treasurer] are Zell’s notes towards writing articles about the politics of the countries visited - particularly China, and the dangerous military presence in Japan.