Tough Tarbell Trivia

[Rob Wick]

Roger,

It was before.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Does it have to do with Ida being the only woman in her graduation class (college)?

[Steve]

Despite my pandemic-induced penny-pinching, I still have one newspaper database subscription which hasn't expired. The earliest mention of Ida Tarbell outside of Pennsylvania which I could find is from page 10 of the 22 June 1880 edition of the Cleveland Leader which mentions "Miss Ida M. Tarbell" giving a talk on Elizabeth Barrett Browning during the start of Commencement Exercises at Allegheny College.

[Rob Wick]

Even though we differ on the newspaper, Steve, that is correct. And, as you can now tell Roger, it was dealing with graduation, but not about her being the only woman.

My newspaper was actually the New York Tribune, (the story obviously made the rounds). I believe that is likely the first time she was ever mentioned in a newspaper outside of western Pennsylvania although I cannot prove that with 100 percent certainty. I searched ProQuest Historical Newspapers, NewspaperArchive.com, and GenealogyBank.com for all the unique articles I could find. So far I've found around 800 unique articles about her, some only a paragraph and others as large as two full pages. And that doesn't include articles that discussed what was appearing in a particular month in either McClure's or the American Magazine. Including those (which I left out because they don't tell anything about Tarbell) and you would have well into the thousands.

Of course, another point to make is that many of the articles I've found were syndicated, meaning that while they may have appeared in several newspapers across the country, there was no one newspaper they came from. If I'm ever able to do my annotated bibliography of Tarbell, I would like to try to separate those that came from just one paper and those that were syndicated. While some bear the mark of the syndicate, many that were obviously done that way do not.

Good job gentlemen.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Many thanks to Steve for sending this article. It's from p. 10 of the 22 June 1880 Cleveland Leader mentioning Ida Tarbell.

[Rob Wick]

No Googling, please.

What is the significance of this building to Tarbell.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

No idea - wild guess - when she had her meeting with Robert Lincoln this is where the two met.

[Rob Wick]

Good try Roger, but that's not it.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Does it have anything to do with the Lincolns?

[Rob Wick]

Roger.

Nothing to do with Lincoln. In fact it's from when Tarbell was a little girl.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Still have no idea. So I will make another wild guess: it's the first school Ida Tarbell attended. It does not look like a school, but maybe classes were held there on a temporary basis during the time Tarbell's school was constructed.

[AussieMick]

It reminds me of New Orleans.

[Rob Wick]

Another good guess, Roger, but it isn't a school.

Mike, it isn't located in New Orleans.

Best
Rob

[Steve]

The building where her dad's oil business was located?

[Rob Wick]

Good guess Steve, but that isn't it.

Best
Rob

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Clue: Neither the building, nor the city in which it stood, is in existence any longer.

Best
Rob