Our favorite author started out her career as a Graphic Artist. Yes, she wrote her first story and won a local writing contest when she was only 11 but in her early twenties she was attending and teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We have that information referenced on her mini-bio page and I was able to locate an article about her winning an award there in the local newspaper using Newspaper.com. I just love these old newspapers. They are filled with lots of great information and I cannot wait until more of them are digitized, online and made searchable.
Just for fun I converted the prize amount into today’s dollars which would be around $1,300. Hey, that prize was nothing to sneeze at. It is just too bad that she was unable to go to Europe when she won the Chesson for a season of study and travel in 1944 because of War. It would be great to get a copy of the items she created for both those contests.
I looked online to see if there was any information available on the Academy’s website like old year books or even a database of past students and teachers. There was nothing available online which is a shame. If you haven’t visited some of the other colleges like the University of Georgia or Florida State University they have digitized their yearbooks and offer them for free viewing online. It is so cool to see how the students have changed over the years. Anyway, I emailed the museum director of PAFA and received the following response:
“Dear Jolene MacFadden,
Thank you for your email and your interest in the archival holdings at PAFA. My name is Hoang Tran, the museum archivist.
I checked my database and found there were no records of Dorothy Gilman Butters. I checked under the name Gilman and was able to locate and confirm that Dorothy Edith Gilman attended PAFA.
We do have records documenting her time here at PAFA—and it seems she won the Cresson Traveling scholarship. These records are not digitized, and that is a reason why you did not find anything when searching on our digital archive.
I invite you to PAFA to conduct archival research at our facilities. There is no fee for scheduling a research appointment. If you cannot make it to Philadelphia, the archives also offers remote research assistance for a fee. More information on this service can be found here: https://www.pafa.org/museum/research-services
A quick review of the materials, I estimate it will cost about $40-60 (1-2 hours of work with reproduction services). If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thank you,
HOANG TRAN
Director of Archives
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
128 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-972-2066│ pafa.org”
Now all I have to do is come up with the money to have the remote assistant copy all the materials and email them to me. Oh, well, that’s another thing on the list of things I need to get additional funding for to be able to write a great biography.
Till next time: keep reading!
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To ask your questions about getting all of Dorothy Gilman’s books converted over to eBook format or any other questions you might have about her work please contact her Agent on their website below
Website: http://www.morhaimliterary.com/contact
