Speaker: Philip M Coons, MD, Prof. Emeritus - Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine
Introduced By: Linda Karwisch
Attendance: NESC: 82, Zoom: 36
Guest(s): Tanja Greene, Jean Hodgin
Scribe: Alan Schmidt
Editor: Bill Elliott
View a recording of today’s Zoom presentation at:
Today's Program 030424
The talk was a presentation about the life of Indiana author Gene Stratton-Porter. It traced her life from her formative years on a farm in Wabash County, Indiana, to her two homes in Geneva and Rome City, Indiana, and finally her California years near Los Angeles, where she was tragically killed in a streetcar accident. The talk was richly illustrated with pictures of Gene, her two homes in Indiana, and her wildlife photography. She was an amateur naturalist, a conservationist, and a feminist. Gene was nicknamed little birdwoman from waiting for the perfect bird picture in the swamp.
She was born Geneva Grace Stratton August 17, 1863 as the last of twelve children at the family’s Hopewell farm. Her mother was 47 at her birth. Gene’s formative years were in Wabash County, Indiana from birth to age 23. Her father, Mark Stratton, nightly drilled their children with the Mc Guffy reader. She was concerned for birds on the farm and trained a rooster to crow when it heard amen.
Gene married Charles Porter, who owned 60 oil wells, April 21, 1886. She spent 1888 – 1913 in Geneva, Indiana, the Limberlost years, as a writer and photographer developing her own photos in the house. She had a collection of 9 birds including a parrot, grosbeak, linnet, and orioles. The site is now the Gene Stratton-Porter State historic site with free entry for State Museum members. An agile person, Limber Jim, got lost for several days in the enormous swamp to give it its Limberlost Swamp name.
The married couple grew apart with separate interests. Gene began to write her first book, The Strike at Shane’s, in 1893 about birds going on strike because family members were shooting them, based on her own family member’s behavior in the cherry orchard. Her book won an American Society prize. She also took luna and cecropia moth, kingfisher, and vulture pictures in the swamp for another book. Gene wrote 13 novels, 8 nature studies, and numerous poems and essays. The novels were more popular than the nature studies. Two novels, Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost, featured the Limberlost Swamp. Earnings from her novels and nature studies, including What I Have Done with Birds and Moths of the Limberlost, allowed her to move to Sylvan Lake for privacy, also corresponding to the swamp being drained for oil rigs and farmers.
The Wildflower Woods years were 1913 to 1919. She planted 90% of 14,000 trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Her husband, Charles, would visit on weekends. Exhausted in 1918, Gene entered a sanatorium for several months. She then departed to the Los Angeles, California area from 1919 – 1925 and began to write poetry. Gene deeded her property with wildflowers to the state of Indiana. Her husband became a producer of films of her novels, which were initially silent
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movies. She had a Catalina home and was building a Bel Aire mansion in Beverly Hills, but died after her chauffeur-driven car was rear ended by a streetcar on 12/6/1924. She was responsible for the Limberlost Swamp restoration in Indiana.
Phillip M. Coons, MD
Limberlost Historic site
Wikipedia Limberlost swamp
