Gene Stratton-Porter
Gene Stratton-Porter, born Geneva Grace Stratton, was an American writer, nature photographer, and naturalist from Wabash County, Indiana. In 1917 Stratton-Porter urged legislative support for the conservation of Limberlost Swamp and other wetlands in Indiana. She was also a silent film-era producer who founded her own production company, Gene Stratton Porter Productions, in 1924.
Stratton-Porter wrote several best-selling novels in addition to columns for national magazines, such as McCall's and Good Housekeeping, among others. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages, including Braille, and at their peak in the 1910s attracted an estimated 50 million readers. Eight of her novels, including A Girl of the Limberlost, were adapted into moving pictures. Stratton-Porter was also the subject of a one-woman play, A Song of the Wilderness. Two of her former homes in Indiana are state historic sites, the Limberlost State Historical Site in Geneva and the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site on Sylvan Lake, near Rome City, Indiana.
Early life and education
Geneva Grace Stratton, the twelfth and last child of Mary and Mark Stratton, was born at the family's Hopewell Farm on August 17, 1863, near Lagro in Wabash County, Indiana. Mark Stratton, a Methodist minister and farmer of English descent, and Mary Stratton, a homemaker of German-Swiss ancestry, were married in Ohio on December 24, 1835, relocated to Wabash County, Indiana, in 1838, and settled at Hopewell Farm in 1848. Geneva's eleven siblings included Catherine, Mary Ann, Anastasia, Florence, Ada, Jerome, Irvin, Leander, and Lemon, in addition to two sisters, Samira and Louisa Jane, who died at a young age. Geneva's married sister, Mary Ann, died in an accident in February 1872; her teenaged brother, Leander, whom Geneva called Laddie, drowned in the Wabash River on July 6, 1872.In 1874 twelve-year-old Geneva moved to Wabash, Indiana, with her parents and three unmarried siblings. They initially lived in the home of Geneva's married sister, Anastasia, and her husband, Alvah Taylor, a lawyer. Geneva's mother died on February 3, 1875, less than four months after the move to Wabash. Thereafter, Geneva boarded with various relatives in Wabash until her marriage to Charles Porter in 1886. Geneva, who was also called Geneve during her youth, shortened her name to Gene during her courtship with Porter.
Gene received little formal schooling early in life; however, she developed a strong interest in nature, especially birds. As a young girl, Gene's father and her brother, Leander, taught her to appreciate nature as she roamed freely around the family farm, observing animals in their natural habitats and caring for various pets.
When her father shot a red-tailed hawk, she rescued it and nursed it back to health. Her family nicknamed her “Little Bird Woman" and her father gave her “the personal and indisputable ownership of each bird of every description that made its home on his land.”
It was said of Stratton-Porter's childhood that she had been "reared by people who constantly pointed out every natural beauty, using it wherever possible to drive home a precept, the child lived out-of-doors with the wild almost entirely." After the family moved to Wabash in 1874, Gene attended school on a regular basis and became an avid reader. She also began music lessons in banjo, violin, and piano from her sister, Florence, and received private art lessons from a local instructor. Gene finished all but the final term of her senior year at Wabash High School. Because she was failing her classes, she made the decision on her own to quit, later claiming that she had left school to care for Anastasia, who was terminally ill with cancer and receiving treatment in Illinois.
Marriage and family
In 1884 thirty-four-year-old Charles Darwin Porter saw Gene Stratton during her trip to Sylvan Lake, Indiana, where she was attending the Island Park Assembly, a Chautauqua gathering. Porter, a druggist, was thirteen years older than Stratton, who was not yet twenty-one. After ten months of regularly exchanging letters, the couple met at another gathering at Sylvan Lake, during the summer of 1885. They became engaged in October 1885 and were married on August 21, 1886. Gene Stratton-Porter kept her family surname and added her husband's after her marriage.Charles Porter, who had numerous business interests, became a wealthy and successful businessman. Of Scots-Irish descent, he was the son and oldest child of Elizabeth and John P. Porter, a doctor. Charles owned an interest in a drugstore in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which he sold soon after his marriage, and also owned drugstores in Decatur and Geneva. He also owned and operated farms, a hotel, and a restaurant. Porter and other investors organized the Bank of Geneva in 1895. He also became a Trenton Oil Company investor. At one time he had more than sixty oil wells drilled on his land.
Gene and Charles Porter's only child, a daughter, named Jeannette, was born on August 27, 1887, when the Porters were living in Decatur, Indiana. The family moved to Geneva, in Adams County, Indiana, in 1888. Charles pursued various business interests and traveled extensively, while Gene stayed at home. Gene took pride in her family and maintaining a home, but she opposed the restrictive, traditional marriages of her era and grew bored and restless. She maintained her independence through the pursuit of her lifelong interests in nature and birdlife, and began by writing about these subjects to earn her own income. In time, she became an independently wealthy novelist, nonfiction writer, and film producer.
Stratton-Porter had four grandchildren, two granddaughters, and two grandsons. The Porters' daughter, Jeannette, married G. Blaine Monroe in 1909 and had two daughters: Jeannette Helen Monroe was born on November 27, 1911; Gene Stratton Monroe was born on March 22, 1914, and became a film actor under the stage name Gene Stratton, starring in silent films based on three of her grandmother's books. The Monroes divorced in 1920, and then Jeannette and her two daughters moved to Los Angeles, California, to live with Stratton-Porter, who had moved there in 1919. On June 6, 1923, Jeannette married James Leo Meehan, a film producer, who was Stratton-Porter's business associate. Meehan attempted to help the daughter Gene Stratton Monroe find work in talking pictures by encouraging her to act on stage at Harold Lloyd's showcase, Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals, and naming her in his column for the Motion Picture Herald called "From Hollywood," saying she wanted more film work, particularly in new films based on her grandmother's books.
After the death of her brother, Lemon Stratton, in late 1915, Stratton-Porter became the guardian of his daughter, Leah Mary Stratton. Leah lived with Stratton-Porter for several years after Leah's father's death.
Major residences
In 1888 Stratton-Porter persuaded her husband, Charles, to move their family from Decatur to Geneva in Adams County, Indiana, where he would be closer to his businesses. He initially purchased a small home within walking distance of his drugstore; however, when oil was discovered on his land, it provided the financial resources needed to build a larger home. The Limberlost Cabin at Geneva served as Stratton-Porter's home from 1895 to 1913. In 1912, with the profits she made from her best-selling novels and successful writing career, Stratton-Porter purchased property along Sylvan Lake, near Rome City in Noble County, Indiana, and built the Cabin at Wildflower Woods estate, which eventually encompassed. Both of these properties are preserved as state historic sites.Stratton-Porter moved to southern California in 1919 and made it her year-round residence. She purchased homes in Hollywood and built a vacation home that she named Singing Water on her property on Catalina Island. Floraves, her lavish mountaintop estate in Bel Air, was nearly completed at the time of her death in 1924, but she never lived in it.
Limberlost Cabin (Geneva, Indiana)
Construction on a two-story, 14-room, cedar-log Queen Anne style rustic home in Geneva began in 1894 and was completed in 1895. The Porters named their new home the Limberlost Cabin in reference to its location near the Limberlost Swamp, where Stratton-Porter liked to explore and found the inspiration for her writing. Stratton-Porter lived in the cabin until 1913.While residing in Geneva, Stratton-Porter spent much time exploring, observing nature, sketching, and making photographs at the Limberlost Swamp. She also began writing nature stories and books. The nearby swamp was the setting for two of her most popular novels, Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost. In addition, the swamp was the locale for many of her works of natural history. Stratton-Porter became known as "The Bird Lady" and "The Lady of the Limberlost" to friends and readers.
Between 1888 and 1910, the area's wetlands around Stratton-Porter's home were drained to reclaim the land for agricultural development and the Limberlost Swamp, along with the flora and fauna that Stratton-Porter documented in her books, was destroyed. In 1912 she purchased property for a new home at Sylvan Lake in Noble County, Indiana. The Porters sold the Limberlost Cabin in 1923. In 1947 the Limberlost Conservation Association of Geneva donated it to the State of Indiana. Designated as the Limberlost State Historic Site, the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites operates the site as a house museum. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Cabin at Wildflower Woods
After the Limberlost Swamp was drained and its natural resources developed for commercial purposes, Stratton-Porter sought alternate locations for inspiration. She initially purchased a small home on the north side of Sylvan Lake, near Rome City, in Noble County, Indiana, as a summer home while she looked for property to build a new residence. In 1912 she purchased lakeside property using her own funds and designed and had a new home built there in 1913. Stratton-Porter named her new home the Cabin at Wildflower Woods, which she also called Limberlost Cabin because of its similarity to the Porters' home in Geneva. While her Sylvan Lake home was under construction, Stratton-Porter found time to write Laddie, her sixth novel. She moved into the large, two-story, cedar-log cabin in February 1914; her husband, Charles, who remained at their home in Geneva, commuted to the lakeside property on weekends.Stratton-Porter assisted in developing the grounds of Wildflower Woods into her private wildlife sanctuary. Its natural setting provided her with the privacy she desired, at least initially; however, her fame attracted too many unwanted visitors and trespassers. The property's increasing lack of privacy was one of the reasons that caused her move to California in 1919. Stratton-Porter offered to sell her property to the State of Indiana in 1923 to establish a state nature preserve, but representatives of the state government did not respond. She retained ownership of Wildflower Woods for the remainder of her life. Scenes from a movie based on Stratton-Porter's book, The Harvester, were filmed there in 1927.
In 1940 the Gene Stratton-Porter Association purchased Wildflower Woods from Stratton-Porter's daughter, Jeannette Porter Meehan; in 1946 the association donated the property to the State of Indiana, including the cabin, its formal gardens, orchard, and pond. Designated as the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site, the present-day property, including that were part of her original purchase, is operated by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites and open to the public. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. In addition to the cabin, guests can explore a one-acre formal garden, wooded paths, and a wetland and prairie that is undergoing restoration. The Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site is supported by the Gene Stratton-Porter Memorial Society, Inc.