Title: Charles Finger’s Family and the Pratt Sisters - Part 1
Joy Pratt Markham and Evangeline Pratt Waterman were friends with Charles Finger, his wife Eleanor (Nellie), and daughter Helen. Charles Finger and his daughter Helen Finger were considered local celebrities.
* Part 1: Summary of Charles Finger’s Life *
First, I will give a summary of Charles Finger’s life using excerpts from Wikipedia and the article on Charles Joseph Finger in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas written by Ethel C. Simpson.
Charles J. Finger was born in Willesden, England in 1867, and was educated at King’s College London. He had a strong literary and musical education and was active in the Fabian movement. At age 20 he began to travel extensively, visiting first Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, where he worked as gold seeker, guide, and cook for the first sheep farming stations. He then moved to New York, London, and several cities in Texas.
Charles became a United States citizen in 1896 and married Eleanor (Nellie) Ferguson, daughter of a sheep rancher, in 1902. From 1898 to 1904, he directed the San Angelo Conservatory of Music in Texas. He worked as sheep herder, union organizer, boilermaker’s helper in a railroad shop, auditor for the Ohio River and Columbus Railway Company, and general manager of the Ohio Southeastern System.
Charles and Nellie had five children. In 1920, the Finger family settled in Fayetteville, Arkansas at a homestead they called Gayeta, where Charles pursued a career as a writer. Gayeta was located in west Fayetteville on the road to Farmington. On today's map, it is off Martin Luther King Blvd just past highway 49.
In an effort to hold together the readership of the Mirror, a literary magazine with a national circulation, after its editor William Marion Reedy’s death, Charles started a magazine, All’s Well, or The Mirror Repolished. From 1920 through 1935, Charles wrote and published it almost single-handedly. It was a mixture of literary reminiscences and essays about northwest Arkansas.
Charles wrote thirty-six books after he settled in Fayetteville. One of his many adventure books won the 1925 Newbery Medal for children’s literature. The book was Tales from Silver Lands (1924), a collection of stories from Central and South America. In addition to adventure tales, Charles wrote approximately thirty volumes in the Little Blue Books series which was the first mass-market paperback enterprise in the United States. He published his autobiography Seven Horizons in 1930. Charles was employed from 1936 through 1938 as an editor of the Federal Writers Project (FWP) guidebook, Arkansas: A Guide to the State. From 1933 through 1940, he was also a managing editor for the Journeys Through Bookland series which was sold door to door.
Charles entertained literary and artistic guests at his home and was a mentor to younger literary and intellectual aspirants from Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. For this, he was awarded an honorary LL. D. in 1932. Charles died in 1941 of influenza and a heart attack. His wife Nellie died in 1965.
One of Charles and Nellie’s five children, Helen Finger, became a well-known artist and illustrator. She married Robert A. Leflar in 1946 at age 34. They had two sons, Robert and Charles, who still live in Fayetteville today.
* Part 2: Finger Family and the Pratt Sisters *
A. Children’s Gayeta Lodge Dramatic Club
Fayetteville Daily Democrat, October 9, 1922
In the ‘At Large Among the Literati. With the Book Worm’ section of the newspaper, it says:
“The Gayeta Lodge Dramatic Club. Fayetteville has a little theatre doing worth while things in the way of dramatic art. The theatre happens to be where the actors are, out-of-doors on a fifty foot stage when the weather is good, or, when it is not, then within a small room where forty people gathered together before a stage space not more than five or six feet deep. But as all the world knows, ‘the play’s the thing’ and the play was the thing Saturday evening when nearly half a hundred friends of the sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Charles J. Finger and the sons and daughters of some of their neighbors, members of the Gayeta Lodge Dramatic Club, made their first public appearance.”
Fayetteville Daily Democrat, October 19, 1922
“The Gayeta Lodge Dramatic Club will present the play, “A Night at an Inn” by Lord Dunsany, at the University High School auditorium on Wednesday morning, October 25th. The play will be given under the auspices of Prof. D. H. Markham [Joy’s husband] and is the second of a series of entertainments which the high school has planned to give during the winter. Following is the cast for Wednesday: Hubert Finger, A.B. Fortescue (Toff); Charles Finger Jr., William Jones (Bill); Ben Williams, Albert Thomas; Kitty Louise Finger, Jacob Smith (Sniggers); Virginia Hanna, First Priest of Klesh; Georgia Williams, Second Priest of Klesh; Ralph Jones, Third Priest of Klesh.”
B. Fellow artists Helen Finger and Joy Markham
Northwest Arkansas Times, October 6, 1937
“About 20 paintings by local artists or former Fayetteville artists have been secured for the Washington County Fair Fine Arts Exhibition which will be placed in the Armory. Artists whose work will be represented include among others: …, Joy Pratt Markham, Helen Finger, …”
Northwest Arkansas Times, June 15, 1940
“The Ozark Writers and Artists Guild convention will be held at Eureka Springs July 20-22, it was announced today by Cora Pinkley Call, president. Basin Park hotel will be headquarters. All writers and artists and persons interested in promoting literary and artistic output of the Ozark area are invited. Charles J. Finger, Helen Finger, Charles Morrow Wilson, Rosa Z. Marinoni, Roberta Fulbright, Ralph Hudson, …, Joy Pratt Markham, … and many others are invited to spend one day of the three, if possible.”
Northwest Arkansas Times, September 15, 1941
“A. Raymond Katz of Chicago, Hungarian-born artist who is sketching in the Ozarks, was guest-speaker Sunday noon at a luncheon for artists and art-lovers in the Blue room of the Washington hotel. Ann Guilliot of Dallas and Winslow, noted flower painter, and Maegeane Rice Mitchell of Russellville and Muskogee were other visiting artists honored. Ralph Hudson, head of the University art department presided, introducing the guests of honor and a number of local student artists, two of whom, Viola Kerr and Sunbeam Thomsen, have exhibited. Florence Altizer, sculptor, and Joy Pratt Markham were local professional artists introduced. Helen Finger, local illustrator, today entertained Mr. Katz at Gayeta Lodge.”
C. Nellie Finger and the Pratt Sisters
Evangeline Waterman and Nellie Finger were both members of the Modern Literature Club, a women's book club. They met in different members’ homes, including Gayeta Lodge where the Finger family lived and the Pratt family home on West Mountain (now called Markham Hill).
Evangeline, Joy, and Nellie were also members of the Fayetteville Garden Club. A September 16, 1932 article in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat says: “Years program for the Fayetteville Garden Club will be started next month. Topics of interest in gardening were discussed at the meeting Wednesday at the home of Mrs. C. J. Finger. Mrs. Joy Pratt Markham is president of the club, which was organized last April, Mrs. Jess Rogers is vice-president, and Mrs. W. A. Fowler is secretary. Other members are Mrs. J. S. Waterman, Mrs. A. W. Jamison, Mrs. D. Y. Thomas, …, Mrs. Finger, Mrs. Paul Heerwagen, and Mrs. Lillian Blackburn.”
(To be continued next week. All photos were found online.)
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