Ethel Morgan-Dunham (1880-1960)

Née Edna Ethel Morgan
Author, Artist, Teacher, School Principal
Born December 12, 1880, Shreve, Ohio
Died September 14, 1960, Fairhope, Alabama

Edna Ethel Morgan was born on December 12, 1880, the seventh daughter of Hugh Morgan, a farmer, and Sarah (Weiker) Morgan, his wife. Her place of birth was Shreve, Ohio. Edna graduated high school and continued her education with two years at a college unknown to me. In 1900, calling herself by then Ethel, she lived far from home, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, at a place called Raceland.

Still in existence, Raceland is an old stagecoach tavern converted to a home for an old Virginia family. Originally called Rice's Tavern and built circa 1750 (more information at this link), Raceland was once owned by William "Racer Billy" Wynn (1784-1853), an owner and breeder of racehorses. There was a racetrack at Raceland (and slave quarters, too). Racer Billy passed the house on to his son, Marshall Ambler Moncure (1841-1900), once of the Ninth Virginia Cavalry, C.S.A. In 1900, when Ethel Morgan was living there, the head of the household was Elizabeth Imogene "Bettie" (Wynn) Moncure, widow of Marshall A. Moncure. Also in the house was Bettie's son, Ambler B. Moncure (1868-1933), and Ambler's wife, Rhoda (Morgan) Moncure (1875-1946), older sister of Ethel Morgan.

Ethel Morgan taught in the public schools of Iowa for many years. In 1910, she was at Stanton, Iowa, and in 1915, at Dunkerton. In 1921, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, she married Leroy A. Dunham (1886-1977), a U.S. Army veteran of World War I. By 1930, the couple were in Elgin, Iowa, where Dunham was a school superintendent and his wife was a school principal. The two shared a birthday, December 12. Upon his death in 1977, Dunham was buried at Biloxi National Cemetery in Mississippi.

The Dunhams moved to Alabama in the early 1930s. In 1935 and 1940, they were at Loxley in Baldwin County, Alabama. Ethel Morgan-Dunham had one poem in Weird Tales, "Magic Carpets," from July 1934. She preceded her husband in death, passing away at age seventy-nine on September 14, 1960. Ethel Dunham was buried at Colony Cemetery in Fairhope, Alabama, a place founded more than half a century before by Iowans.

Ethel Morgan Dunham's Poem in Weird Tales
"Magic Carpets" (July 1934)

Further Reading

There is much to read on Raceland and the Wynn-Moncure families. If you have access to Ancestry.com, you can read a little more on Ethel Morgan-Dunham and see a few images of her or related to her life, including the self-portrait shown below.

Ethel Morgan-Dunham (1880-1960), a self-portrait. Uploaded by a user of Ancestry.com.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Kirke Mechem (1889-1985)

Baseball Player, Chess Player, Editor, Author, Historian, Poet, Playwright
Born December 20, 1889, Mankato, Kansas
Died June 5, 1985, Santa Clara County, California

Kirke Field Mecham was born on December 20, 1889, in Mankato, Kansas. Before the Great War, he was a stenographer for the Southwestern Journal in Kansas City, Missouri. On October 25, 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served overseas with the 137th Infantry, 35th Division. Mechem's unit arrived on the front lines in France on June 18, 1918. Several months of heavy fighting and heavy casualties followed. After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Mechem served as editor of The Jayhawker in France, a service paper. (I presume The Jayhawker in France was a paper for Kansans.) He also wrote poems and other pieces for papers back home. He was released from service on May 10, 1919.

Kirke F. Mechem was at various times in his life editor of The Legionnaire, a paper of the Thomas Hopkins Post of the American Legion in Wichita, Kansas; editor of The Price Current, a commercial newspaper; and author of poems published in Harper's Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Weird Tales, and newspapers in Kansas and elsewhere. He wrote at least two plays, Who Won the War? (1928) and John Brown (1938), which won the Maxwell Anderson Award. Mechem wrote John Brown while on a thirty-day vacation spent in a Santa Fe railroad caboose on Wakarusa Creek. Living on salmon, potatoes, and coffee, Mechem wrote out his play in longhand while he reclined in a caboose bunk.

From about 1930 to 1951, Kirke Mechem was secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society. He edited Annals of Kansas, publiched in two volumes in 1954 and after. His articles and other publications for the Kansas Historical Society included "The Bull Fight at Dodge" (Kansas Historical Quarterly, Aug. 1933); "The Mythical Jayhawk" (Kansas Historical Quarterly, Feb. 1944); and The Story of Home on the Range (booklet, 1950). Some other credits:

• "Baulny Hill" (poem, Topeka Daily Capital, 1919)
• "These Ageless Themes" (poem, Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 1922)
• "A Bob Ballade" (poem, The Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 6, 1924)
• "Night Specters" (poem, Weird Tales, July 1932)

Mechem's son, Kirke L. Mechem (b. 1925) is a well-known composer of choral music and other works. The elder Mechem's wife Katherine was a pianist.

Kirke Mechem died on June 5, 1985, in Santa Clara County, California, at age ninety-five.

Kirke Mechem's Poem in Weird Tales

"Night Specters" (July 1932)

Further Reading

Mechem's articles for the Kansas Historical Quarterly, listed above, are available on the Internet.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

George Whitley aka A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)

Arthur Bertram Chandler
Aka Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M., George Whitely, George Whitley
Author, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Merchant Mariner
Born March 28, 1912, Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Died June 6, 1984, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I thought I had covered most of the authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in previous articles, but then I find that the author called George Whitley was actually the well known Anglo-Australian author A. Bertram Chandler. I suppose I'll keep making these discoveries until I have written about all of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales.

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born on March 28, 1912, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He served in the merchant marine in his native country and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1956 after the breakup of his first marriage. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his earliest science fiction story was "'This Means War!'" in Astounding Science Fiction for May 1944. His first and only story for Weird Tales was "Castaway" from November 1947, published under the byline of George Whitley. Chandler was a very prolific author. Much of his fiction has to do with life aboard ship.

You can read about A. Bertram Chandler at various websites. Just one more fact before the facts of his death: Chandler's daughter Jenny is married to Ramsey Campbell, who has also contributed to Weird Tales.

A. Bertram Chandler died on June 6, 1984, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was seventy-two years old.

George Whitley's Story in Weird Tales

"Castway" (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

Besides Wikipedia, see the following sources (and embedded links found therein):

A. Bertram Chandler

AustLit

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, July 1946, the British edition with "Special Knowledge" by A. Bertram Chandler as the cover story. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Cosmo #170, a complete science fiction novel (or, in the Italian, "i romanzi del fantascienza") by Chandler, from June 1965. The Italian title is Nelle Immense, Profondita Spaziall, in English, The Deep Reaches of Space. Cover art by Luigi Garonzi.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Sudie Stuart Hager (1895-1982)

Teacher, Poet
Born June 30, 1895, Manchester, Grant County, Oklahoma
Died May 27, 1982, Kimberly, Idaho

Sudie Bower Stuart was born on June 30, 1895, in Manchester, in Grant County, Oklahoma, to Marion V. and Susan Elizabeth Allison "Allie" (Starks) Stuart. According to her niece, Sudie and her family moved to Binger, Oklahoma, where she attended school. The enumerator of the 1910 Federal census found the Stuart family in Fern, in Caddo County, Oklahoma.

Sudie B. Stuart taught at the Henley school in Klamath Falls, Oregon, from 1917 to 1919. Prior to that, she had lived in Silverton, Oregon. By 1920, Sudie was married and living in Kimberly, Idaho, with her husband, Everett G. Hager (1890-1971). Sudie B. Stuart Hager seems to have resided in Kimberly for the rest of her life, working as a teacher at the junior high school there for ten years before retiring to devote herself to her poetry. Called "a poet of the people and a Solomon of the Soil," (1) she was appointed the third poet laureate of the State of Idaho in 1949, succeeding in that post Irene Welch Grissom. (Ezra Pound was the state's first poet laureate.) Sudie's poetry appeared in Country Gentleman, Farm Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as many newspapers. Her only poem for Weird Tales was "Inheritance," in the issue of July 1940. Sudie's poems were collected in Earthbound (1947) and Beauty Will Abide (1970).

Sudie Stuart Hager served as poet laureate of Idaho until her death on May 27, 1982, in Kimberly. She was buried at Twin Falls Cemetery, Twin Falls, Idaho.

Sudie Stuart Hager's Poem in Weird Tales

"Inheritance" (July 1940)

Further Reading

• "Poet Laureate of Idaho Is Former Klamath Woman," Klamath Falls Herald and News, February 26, 1949, page 14.
• "Writers Will Mark Idaho Poetry Day" by Frances C. Yost, Idaho State Journal, October 12, 1950, page 9.

Note

(1) From "Writers Will Mark Idaho Poetry Day" by Frances C. Yost, Idaho State Journal, October 12, 1950, page 9.

Sudie Stuart Hager (1895-1982)

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A Swipe from Virgil Finlay and Back Again?

Virgil Finlay (1914-1971) lived and died by making swipes from the other artists, photographers, that is, who took pictures for the sake of art or commerce. (Those two fields are not, of course, mutually exclusive.) However, I don't know him to have swiped from other illustrators or draftsmen. Until now. Maybe. But this one is a little tricky, so I'll go through it step by step:

First came Finlay's black-and-white interior illustration for Pearl Norton Swet's story "The Medici Boots," published in Weird Tales in the August-September issue of 1936:

Next came Harold W. McCauley's (1913-1977) cover illustration for Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy, from May 1953. Although the pose is similar to that of the conjured spirit in Virgil Finlay's illustration above, I would not call this necessarily a swipe by McCauley:

Update (Sept. 9, 2018): Now I find that Finlay reused his earlier drawing and seems to have swiped McCauley's drawing for his interior illustration for "A God Named Kroo" by Henry Kuttner, printed in Fantastic Story Magazine, Summer 1954. 

A year between issues (May 1953 to Summer 1954) is enough for Finlay to have seen McCauley's illustration and to have worked from it for his own rendering, but I'm still not sure this is a swipe. There is definite resemblance of Finlay's second drawing to McCauley's illustration of May 1953, but both are similar to Finlay's first drawing from nearly thirty years before. Also, note that "A God Named Kroo" had previously been printed in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944. I wondered whether Finlay's illustration had also been reprinted, so I looked it up. As it turns out, it had not. The artist in the original printing is unknown, and his (or her) illustrations look nothing like those of Finlay or McCauley.

Another near-twenty years passed before a painting that Finlay had done in the 1960s showed up on the cover of Weird Tales, Summer 1973, after the artist had died. This version is a combination of Finlay's two previous illustrations as well as of McCauley's cover. It's not a straight swipe of McCauley's drawing, though, because Finlay rotated McCauley's Shiva figure slightly, recolored it, and recast it as a kind of Medusa or Gorgon figure, more or less like his illustration from 1954 but also with a definite resemblance to the one from 1936:

So what do we call it? A swipe of a swipe? And who did the swiping? McCauley from Finlay? Finlay from McCauley? Finlay from Finlay? I'm not sure. Another possibility--one that seems surer to me now versus when I first wrote this article in 2017--is that both Finlay and McCauley swiped their pictures from an unknown original source. Whatever the case, it seems likely that, as in the old commercial with Mr. Owl, "The world may never know."

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Bernard Austin Dwyer (1897-1943)

William Bernard Augustine Dwyer
Poet, Artist, Fantasy Fan and Correspondent, Farm Worker and Farmer, CCC Camp Worker, Sign Painter
Born May 29, 1897, West Shokan, New York
Died August 19, 1943, presumably in Kingston, New York

Bernard Austin Dwyer is known now among fans of weird fiction as a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) of Providence, Rhode Island. I don't know that the two ever met, but I don't have many sources on Lovecraft's biography or voluminous correspondence. What I can say is that Bernard Austin Dwyer, who has largely escaped the investigations of biographers, is a little more known today than he was yesterday.

Bernard Austin Dwyer was christened William Bernard Augustine Dwyer--or at least that's the name he claimed on his draft card in World War I. His parents were Philip or Phillip Dwyer (1862-?), an Irish-born farmer and factory worker, and Mary A. Dwyer (Aug. 1863-?), a native of New York. We can speculate that her maiden name was Augustine, thus the origin of her son's second middle name, and, by contraction, his assumed middle name. Dywer had a sister, Katherine or Catherine A. Dwyer Sherman (1899-?), a widow later in life who nursed him when he was sick. He also had a brother, Charles P. Dwyer (1901-1973), possibly nicknamed "Zip."

The Dwyer family moved from place to place in New York State. In 1900, they were in Claverack in Columbia County (which may have been Mary Dwyer's native county). In 1905, Olive, in Ulster County, was their home. By 1915 and through 1920, William B. Dwyer was working on the farm in West Shokan, a place evidently within the town of Olive and in the area of the artist's and writer's colony of Woodstock and Bearsville. By 1925, he was calling himself Bernard W. Dwyer, though still working as a farmer, again in Olive. And by 1930, Dwyer had an industrial job working as a polisher in a factory in Kingston. He was then living with his widowed sister Katherine Sherman.

In the 1930s, Dwyer worked at the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps at Peekskill and Cornwall, New York. Described by the Kingston Daily Freeman as a "powerful giant, talented writer and what not," he was a farmer, gardener, woodcutter, and all-around worker in the outdoors. Dwyer was also an artist, a poet, a writer, and the proprietor of Dwyer Sign Shop in his hometown. For a time, there was a place called Dwyer's Corner where his parents lived, worked, and entertained frequent visitors among their family. For a time also, Dwyer was on a live radio program called "Soph and Joseph" with Sophie (Pinkosz) Miller (1910-1997), who also wrote the script. The show was on WKNY of Kingston.

Dwyer, who modified his name to Bernard Austin Dwyer, had a brief career as a writer in and for pulp magazines. His only work for Weird Tales, other than his letters to "The Eyrie," was a poem, "Ol' Black Sarah," from October 1928. He also had a letter in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror.

Dwyer died on August 19, 1943, presumably in Kingston, New York. Like his friend by mail, H.P. Lovecraft, Dwyer was forty-six years old at his death, an event that occurred on the eve of the anniversary of Lovecraft's birth more than half a century before.

Bernard Austin Dwyer's Poem in Weird Tales
"Ol' Black Sarah" (1928)

Bernard Austin Dwyer's Letters to "The Eyrie" (plus one to Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror)
Letter (June 1929)
Letter (June 1930)
"Oy! Oy! Oy!" (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Oct. 1932)
"Quinn's Masterpiece" [i.e., "Roads"] (Mar. 1938)
"A de Grandin Movie" (Sept. 1938)

Further Reading

• "Quinn's Masterpiece," Dwyer's letter to "The Eyrie" from March 1938, at Wikisource, here.
• "'A Mighty Woodcutter': Bernard Austin Dwyer and His Possible Influence on Lovecraft" and comments, posted by David Haden on the blog Tentaclii:: H.P. Lovecraft Blog, July 13, 2014, here.

A group photograph of Red Cross workers and others from the Kingston (New York) Daily Freeman, June 15, 1943. Bernard Austin Dwyer is the tall man on the far left. His co-worker in radio, Sophie Miller, is on the far right. A little more than two months after this picture was in the Kingston paper, Dwyer was in his grave.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Binny Koras, "The Gypsy Poet" (ca. 1895-?)

Pseudonym of Alexander Rice
Psychiatric Nurse, Journalist, Teacher, YMCA Director, Public Speaker, Artist, Poet, Translator, Occultist
Born ca. 1895
Died ?

Updated on November 13, 2018

Binny Koras, known as "the Gypsy poet," was the pseudonym of a man named Alexander Rice. Rice was born in about 1895. According to a newspaper article from 1922: 

[He] grew up on the highways and byways of middle America, lived in Australia for several years, served during the war as a psychiatric nurse and since returning to the United States in 1919 has been engaged in newspaper writing, teaching and work with boys. A student of oriental languages, he has translated verses from the Japanese, Arabic, and Urdu. (1)

Alexander Rice was managing editor of the Davenport (Iowa) Tribune and a boys' secretary and director of the YMCA in Davenport. He also taught vocational school for ex-servicemen after the war. In 1922, he got a job with Neuhaus and Son of St. Louis to take paintings by important American artists on the road for exhibition. Rice, who was an artist himself, would also give lectures on these paintings.

As Binny Koras, Rice had poems in Dial, Nation, Pagan, Pearson's, Shadowland, and Survey. His poem "Growing Up," originally in the Rock Island Argus (Illinois) and reprinted in The Literary Digest, The Bookman, and Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1921, was called by the same article "perhaps the most widely printed verse of 1921." He had one poem in Weird Tales, "For Clytie," in the issue for November 1926.

Oddly enough, Koras was also an occultist and was listed in Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, compiled and edited by William C. Hartmann, and published in 1927 by The Occult Press of Jamaica, New York. Here is the entry on Koras in its entirety:

SEVENTAN FELLOWSHIP. Based on the Book of Seveta (Arabic, Seventh Century, A.D.). Missionary for North America, Binny Koras, A.M., Ph.D.

He was evidently involved in socialist causes, too, which are, as we now know, just another form of superstition or occult activity.

Binny Koras submitted his verse to newspapers from addresses in Davenport, Iowa; Mattoon, Illinois; and St. Paul, Minnesota. His nickname, "the Gypsy poet," may have come from his wandering ways, but he also claimed Romany ancestry. Unfortunately I have not been able to find out anything more on Alexander Rice or Binny Koras, including his dates and places of birth and death.

Binny Koras' Poem in Weird Tales
"For Clytie" (Nov. 1926)

Further Reading

• "Alexander Rice Gains Fame for Writing a Poem." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Oct. 8, 1921, p. 4.
• "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.
• [Item.] The Dispatch (Moline, IL), July 22, 1922, p. 4.
• "Alexander Rice in Charge of Art Exhibit on Tour." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Aug. 16, 1922, p. 7.

Note

(1) "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.

Here are some poems by Binny Koras, perhaps his complete poems extant:

Growing Up
by Binny Koras (1921)

Gee! But I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to put on longies 
And smoke cigars, 
And be a man 
With a pay-day on Saturday. 
I wanted to grow up 
And have somebody to buy sodas for,
And take to the circus 
Once in a while. 

We all did, then: 
Pat, who could throw any kid in town, 
And Don, who went to the Advent church. 
And said the world was coming to an end 
In Nineteen-hundred, 
And Brick Top and Eppie and Skin and Spider.

We all wanted to grow up 
And become pirates and millionaires and 
Soldiers and Presidents and 
Owners of candy stores. 
And all the time we were eating home-cooking 
And wearing holes in our pants, 
And talking Hog-Latin 
And doing what two fingers in the air 
Stood for;
And saving stamps. 
And making things we read about 
In The Boys' World. 
Do you know how to play mumble-de-peg, 
And skim rocks, 
And tread water, 
And skin the cat? 
Do you know what a stick on the shoulder stands for 
And what "Commggery, wiggery, meggery" means? 

Skin is running a wheat farm, now,
Up in North Dakota. 
Pat is on the road 
Selling something or other. 
Brick Top never grew up, quite, 
And was making darts for a kid of his own 
When I saw him last. 
And Spider is yelling his head off 
About Socialism and the class struggle 
On street corners. 

Don was with the Rainbow Division when the world ended. 

Yesterday I heard a little freckle-face 
Whistle through his fingers 
And tell a feller called Curley 
What he was going to do when he grew up. 

* * *

"Smoke" from 1922, "Evolution" from 1927, and "To One Departed" from 1922.

Original text 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley