An exceptionally rich record of the life of Adah Margaret Ewing (1882-1971), charting her career from clerical assistant to her father to Head of the Retail Book Department of J. K. Gill & Co., which by the early 1920s was the largest book distributor in the region and one of the most important bookstores in the US.
The scrapbook is crammed with typed and autograph letters signed, shop correspondence, memoranda and greetings cards, flyers, manuscript notes, badges, photographs, etc. With it is Ewing’s reading journal, a small black leather-bound address book in which she has recorded all the books she read from 1906 to 1955. Notable authors include Frances Hodgson Burnett, Margaret Sidney, Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton, Ida Tarbell, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jack London.
J. K. Gill & Co. was founded in Salem in 1867. Gill moved to Portland in 1871, and the company grew into a sprawling enterprise which, at its peak, employed over five hundred staff, had retail stores in four western states, and hosted appearances by celebrities like Duke Ellington and Nat “King” Cole in its flagship store.
Ewing began her bookselling career with her father James Ewing (1860-1939) who, on his retirement from the trade in 1902, recommended her to Joseph Gill. In one letter here, Gill notes he is aware she is looking for a job and offers her “employment for at least several weeks”. Those few weeks turned into a lifelong career. She was appointed Head of the Retail Book Department in 1904, a position she held until 1945.
Items relating to Ewing’s trade comprise the majority of the scrapbook, including an interesting mimeograph typescript letter from J. K. Gill to his staff concerning a customer who complained of being treated poorly in the shop “because he was a working man”. Gill reprimands his staff, reminding them that “either man or woman in working clothes is entitled to and must have the same degree of attention as the individual with a high collar, and expensive shirt, or the lady who drives up to the store in an automobile”.
There are numerous memos and letters (both autograph and typed) signed from Gill to Ewing, and ephemera relating to events hosted by the company, including visits by writers Ava Milan, Anne Shannon Monroe, Elizabeth Lambert Wood, Edison Marshall, and Oregon Poet Laureate Edwin Markham.
Ewing’s weekly radio show on KGW radio in Portland and her presentation of a paper at the American Booksellers convention in New York City are featured in newspaper clippings. There are business cards and letters of introduction from colleagues, and a full-page interview with Ewing from a section of a journal subtitled “The American Business Woman”. It paints a portrait of Ewing she evidently wanted to preserve, along with an image of her in her late 30s. “It was when I began to talk books that Miss Ewing’s face brightened as if lighted by some internal flame”, says the interviewer. “She says her life has been nothing but books. All her experiences have been with, by, and through books. I wonder if I can convey to you the peace and serenity that I found in her deep gray eyes as I sat there talking to her. They held a calmness that was almost an intensity, it was so deep, so high, so wide. That calmness has no doubt been nurtured by the clear vision she has obtained in her world of books”.
The domestic and familial aspects of her life are documented by missives from friends, siblings, and colleagues, including a telegram sent by her brother Cloyd B. Ewing from the 1934 Chicago World Fair which reads “The crowds, the sights and the magnitude of the fair are too much for words. I wish you could see it too”.
Together, the scrapbook and reading journal portray the fulfilling professional and personal life of an early 20th-century American bookseller.