Indiana Historical Society - Manuscripts and Archives Department

MARION H. GRAY
PAPERS, 1850-1944

Collection #'s:
M 0118
BV 1367

Table of Contents

Collection Information
Biographical Sketch
Scope and Content Note
Folder Listing
Cataloging Information

Processed by
Charles Latham
April 1990
February 1993

COLLECTION INFORMATION

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Marion Hunter Gray (b. 1899) grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. She married Henry C. Gray in 1921, and lived in Bloomington, Indiana.

SCOPE AND CONTENT

This collection, filling one manuscript box, contains correspondence, and Xerox copies of memoirs and of one diary. The correspondence is arranged chronologically.

  Folders 1-4 contain correspondence, mainly original, 1921-1944, from Selma Neubacher Steele, second wife of Indiana artist T. C. Steele, to Mrs. Gray's grandmother, Mae Hunter Weinstein. A few letters, sent on to Mrs. Weinstein, are to Mrs. Steele from Mrs. Marcus Dickey (wife of James Whitcomb Riley's secretary and biographer). The Weinsteins, who lived in Terre Haute, had a cabin on the same road in Brown County as Steele's House of the Singing Winds, and neighborliness led to intimacy between the two women.

The bulk of these letters (1921-1926) are in Mr. Steele's last years. They show his wife taking care of the practical side of their life together-- dealing with the dilatory furnace man, the impassable road to town, the unreliable caretaker turned bootlegger, the mounting of exhibitions and the sale of frames. While Steele was painting, and traveling to give lectures, his wife also made public appearances. She seems to have been an expert on quilts. Several letters after Steele's death deal with his widow's efforts, finally successful, to make his studio a state historical site. A sampling of these letters has been calendared.

Folder 5 contains a copy of a short essay written by Mrs. Gray about outstanding women in the history of the First Congregational Church of Terre Haute. Folder 6 contains minutes of the Congregational Sewing Society for 1881-1912.

Folders 7 and 8 contain a Xerox copy of the memoirs of Mrs. Gray's uncle, Robert Hunter. A Progressive reformer in the early 1900s, he became very conservative in the 1930s. His papers, given by Mrs. Gray in 1983, are also in the IHS Library, M 0415.

In Folder 9 is genealogical material about the Weinstein family. In Folders 10-12 are copies of memoirs written in the 1920s by Mrs. Gray's grandmother, Thirza Belle Hamilton Weinstein. Born in Terre Haute, she studied at Oxford, Ohio, taught school for two years in rural Illinois, and returned to Terre Haute as a doctor's wife.

Finally, Folder 13 contains Xerox copies of an 1850 overland trip to California by William B. Ogle of Prairieton, Vigo County, a relative [great great grandfather?] of Mrs. Gray. Folder 14 contains a transcript of this diary.

FOLDER INVENTORY

Folder Contents

CATALOGING INFORMATION

For additional information on this collection, including a list of subject headings that may lead you to related materials:

1. Go to the Indiana Historical Society's online catalog
2. Click on the "Local Catalog" icon.
3. Search for the collection by its call number, using the letter or letters designation and four digits (e.g., M 0715, SC 2234).
4. When you find the collection, go to the "Holdings" screen for a list of headings that can be searched for related materials.

END