Myra Bradwell Helmer Pritchard

Myra Bradwell Helmer Pritchard (1889 – February 3, 1947) was an American golfer and writer from Chicago. She inherited, and attempted to publish, a controversial collection of letters from Mary Todd Lincoln.

Myra Bradwell Helmer Pritchard
Myra Bradwell Helmer as a golfer in 1909.
Born
Myra Bradwell Helmer

1889
DiedFebruary 3, 1947
Alma materVassar College
RelativesJames B. Bradwell (grandfather)
Myra Bradwell (grandmother)

Early life
Myra Bradwell Helmer with her grandfather (and publisher), James B. Bradwell, from a 1900 publication on Illinois history.

Myra Bradwell Helmer was born in Chicago, the only child of lawyers Frank Ambrose Helmer and Bessie Bradwell Helmer.[1] Her grandfather James B. Bradwell was a prominent Chicago attorney and abolitionist; her grandmother Myra Bradwell was a publisher and political activist in Illinois, founding editor of the Chicago Legal News in 1868.[2][3] Bessie Bradwell Helmer continued publishing the Chicago Legal News until 1925, and rescued the publication's subscription book from the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.[4] Helmer attended Mrs. Loring's School in Chicago,[5] and graduated from Vassar College in 1910.[6][7]

Career

Myra Bradwell Helmer was just six years old when she became a published author. A collection of her short stories, titled Short Stories, was published by the Chicago Legal News in 1896, to raise money for the Daily News Fresh Air Fund.[8] Medical experts raised concerns about her mental development, seeing precocity as a risk factor for early breakdown.[9] In 1903, the teenaged Helmer published another collection, this time her poetry, verses about her family members, her pets, golf, and other topics, under the title A Child's Thoughts in Rhyme.[10] In 1909 she co-wrote Father Gander Golf Book with Inez Lenore Klumph, again as a fundraiser for the Daily News Fresh Air Fund.[11]

Helmer was also a golfer.[12][13] She held records and championships at many of the courses in the Chicago area.[14][15][16] In 1906 she qualified for a major championship, but had to forfeit to return to Vassar College for school.[17] In 1913 she won the Western Championship in Memphis, Tennessee,[18] and played at the Women's Championship that year in Delaware.[6][19][20]

Myra Helmer Pritchard was an active member of the Chicago Woman's Club.[21] and a contributor to Dogdom, a magazine about dogs.[22]

Myra Bradwell Helmer Pritchard in a bridal portrait, 1915.

The Lincoln-Bradwell letters

Mary Todd Lincoln corresponded with Myra and James Bradwell, Myra Pritchard's grandparents in the 1870s, before, during, and after her brief confinement to an insane asylum.[23] The letters were said to reflect Mrs. Lincoln's distressed mental state and her disapproval of her son Robert Todd Lincoln. The letters from Mrs. Lincoln to the Bradwells were left to Bradwell's daughter, Bessie Helmer, and then to Bessie's daughter, Myra Pritchard.[24] "My mother was most anxious that these letters be published," explained Pritchard, "because she felt that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln had been maligned and that these letters would explain much of the real Mrs. Lincoln to the world and place her in a more favorable light."[25]

Myra Pritchard wrote a book-length manuscript about these letters in 1927, but the family of Robert Lincoln threatened legal action and bought the manuscript rather than allowing its publication. Against the agreement with the Lincoln family, Myra Pritchard kept a copy of the letters and her manuscript, but ordered that it be burned upon her death. The executor of her estate, her sister-in-law Margreta Pritchard, burned the manuscript. A few years later, the sister-in-law was persuaded by a Lincoln collector to burn the typed copies of the letters as well.[26]

Although the Bradwell-Lincoln letters and Pritchard's manuscript were believed to be completely lost, a surviving copy was discovered in 2005, in a steamer trunk belonging to a Lincoln family attorney. Myra Helmer Pritchard's 1927 manuscript was published in 2011 as The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln’s Widow, as Revealed by Her Own Letters by Southern Illinois University Press.[25]

Personal life

Myra Bradwell Helmer married a Canadian medical doctor, James Stuart Pritchard, in 1915.[6][27] They were avid collie owners, and lived in Battle Creek, Michigan,[28] where James was the president of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. She was widowed when the doctor died from thyroid cancer in 1940,[29] and she died in 1947, aged 57 years.[30][31]

References
  1. "A Baby Lawyer". Woman's Journal. 49: 636. December 1891 – via ProQuest.
  2. James, Edward T.; James, Janet Wilson; Boyer, Paul S. (1971). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. pp. 223-225. ISBN 9780674627345. Bessie Bradwell Helmer.
  3. Flinn, John Joseph (1893). The Hand-book of Chicago Biography: A Compendium of Useful Biographical Information for Reference and Study. Standard guide. pp. 67–69.
  4. "Bessie Bradwell". The Great Chicago Fire & The Web of Memory. Archived from the original on 2009-07-17. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  5. "Miss Myra Bradwell Helmer". Chicago Tribune. December 16, 1910. p. 10. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. "Married: Helmer-Pritchard". The Chicago Legal News: A Journal of Legal Intelligence. 48: 98–99. October 28, 1915.
  7. "Alumnae Bulletin". Vassar Miscellany. 40: 594. May 1911.
  8. Helmer, Myra Bradwell (1896). Short Stories. Chicago Legal News Company. p. 9.
  9. "Case of Precocity". The Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic. 38: 444. April 17, 1897 – via ProQuest.
  10. Helmer, Myra Bradwell (1903). A Child's Thoughts in Rhyme. Chicago legal news Company.
  11. Helmer, Myra Bradwell; Klumph, Inez Lenore (1909). Father Gander golf book. The Library of Congress. Chicago, Chicago legal news company.
  12. "Miss Helmer Beaten in Golf". The New York Times. August 31, 1911. p. 8 – via ProQuest.
  13. "Women Play Golf Well". The New York Times. March 24, 1915. p. 12 – via ProQuest.
  14. "Western Department". American Golfer. 2: 125. July 1909.
  15. "Leads 90 Women, Scoring an 88". The Boston Globe. July 31, 1912. p. 6. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. "Women Golfers at Midlothian". Chicago Tribune. June 15, 1909. p. 9. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Only Two Golfers Qualify in Championship". The Inter Ocean. October 9, 1906. p. 4. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. "Miss Myra Helmer Wins Woman's Golf Title". The Montgomery Adviser. September 28, 1913. p. 21. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. "The Women's Championship". American Golfer. 11: 11–17. November 1913.
  20. "Miss Helmer Wins Western Title". The New York Times. September 28, 1913. p. S3 – via ProQuest.
  21. Ill.), Chicago Woman's Club (Chicago (1917). Annual Announcement.
  22. "Dogdom advertisement". Battle Creek Enquirer. March 5, 1926. p. 10. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. Emerson, Jason (2007-09-25). The Madness of Mary Lincoln. SIU Press. pp. 38–41. ISBN 9780809387557.
  24. Lachman, Charles (2008). The Last Lincolns: The Rise and Fall of a Great American Family. Sterling Publishing Company. pp. 370–372. ISBN 9781402758904.
  25. Pritchard, Myra Helmer (2011-02-10). The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow, as Revealed by Her Own Letters. SIU Press. pp. x–xi. ISBN 9780809330126.
  26. Friedman, Jane M. (3 June 2010). America's First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell. Prometheus Books. pp. 71–76. ISBN 9781615924387.
  27. "Granddaughter of Once Slavery Foe, Becomes Bride". The Broad Ax. October 23, 1915. p. 4. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  28. "Sable Supremacy". The Dog Fancier. 32: 43. September 1923.
  29. "Estate of Pritchard v. Commr. of Internal Revenue, 4 T.C. 204". CaseText. Retrieved 2019-06-30.
  30. "Mrs. Pritchard Dies, Graduate of Vassar". Poughkeepsie Journal. February 4, 1947. p. 4. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  31. "Mrs. Pritchard's Will Admitted to Probate". Battle Creek Enquirer. March 12, 1947. p. 8. Retrieved June 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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