IOWA WOMEN’S ARCHIVES
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA LIBRARIES
IOWA CITY, IOWA
BESS NEWCOMER (1893-1990)
PAPERS, 1936-1978
1 linear inch
|
ACQUISITION: |
The papers (donor no. 759) were donated
by Ralph Newcomer in 2001. |
|
ACCESS: |
The papers are open for research. |
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COPYRIGHT: |
»Copyright held by the donor has been transferred to the University of Iowa. |
|
PROCESSED
BY: |
Doris
Malkmus, 2001. [NewcomerB.doc] |
Biography
Bess Pauline Short Newcomer, writer, Farm Bureau officer,
and historian, was born in 1893 in Moulton, Iowa. Her parents Cora Jennings and James Short were both born and
raised on farms in Appanoose County.
Cora Jennings taught school until she married James Short in 1891. They bought a farm next to his parents’ farm
outside of Moulton, but soon after their two children were born, James Short
contracted tuberculosis and the family moved to Colorado in 1895 on the advice
of a physician. The move did not
improve his health, and the family returned to Iowa where James Short died in
1899. Cora Short supported her family
by farming and selling milk to the hotel in Moulton. She paid for the college education of both children through
successful farm management and economizing.
Bess Short graduated from Moulton High School in
1909 and Drake University in 1913 with a B.A. in Latin. She taught for nine years in the Drake
University Extension High School in Des Moines, Iowa, and in Nebraska and
Missouri before returning to Moulton in 1920.
In Moulton, she met and married Ralph E. Newcomer, then the district
trainmaster on the Wabash Railroad.
They had two sons, Ralph, Jr. and Robert, born in 1923 and 1924. In 1926, Ralph Newcomer was promoted to a
supervisory position in St. Louis, returning to Moulton only on weekends until
1930. His next promotion transferred
him to Ohio; in this job he could return to Moulton only occasionally. Dissatisfied with this, he decided in 1932
to retire from the railroad and farm in Moulton. Bess Newcomer had raised their sons on the farm during these
years. When the boys were teenagers,
she became active in the Farm Bureau Women, serving on the state board for
twelve years. During the 1940s, she
wrote a column for the Iowa Bureau Farmer. She also served on the Appanoose County Board of Education for
sixteen years.
When Ralph Newcomer died in 1957, Bess Newcomer
remained on the farm. In the years 1976
to 1978, she contributed several chapters to a bicentennial publication Chronicles of Moulton History. She expanded these writings about her family
and the Wabash Railroad into an autobiographical essay “My Seventy-Year Affair
with the Wabash Railroad.” Although
refused for publication as a book, she kept the manuscript, which is now in
this collection. Bess Newcomer died September
27, 1990.
Scope and
Content Note
The Bess Newcomer papers date from
1936 to 1978 and measure 2 linear inches.
They consist of her columns and a manuscript of her memoir “My
Seventy-Year Affair with the Wabash Railroad.”
Newcomer wrote columns that were regularly published on the first pages
of the Iowa Bureau Farmer from 1941
until 1947. She wrote a regular column,
“Rustic Ruminations” for the Iowa Bureau
Farmer from 1947 until1951, when a change in editor took place. The columns were originally kept in a
scrapbook that has been disassembled and the articles photocopied for
preservation purposes.
The manuscript does not have page numbers until page
131, nor are chapters numbered. Page
numbers given here assume sequential pagination. The first
folder of the manuscript (pp. 1-57) concerns the
history of the Wabash Railroad and the second (pp. 58-154) tells Newcomer
family history in the context of the national economy, the history of the
Wabash Railroad, Moulton, and family lives of railroad workers. A prospectus, bibliography, reference notes,
and list of illustrations are included.
There are no illustrations in the manuscript, however. A few newspaper clippings about Newcomer and
photocopies of the chapters she wrote about the Wabash Railroad and the Short
and Newcomer Families for a history of Moulton complete the collection.
Box no. Description
Box 1