Ellen Browning Scripps

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Ellen Browning Scripps (1891), unknown photographer

Ellen Browning Scripps (born October 18, 1836 in London , England , † August 3, 1932 in La Jolla , California ) was an American journalist , suffragette , entrepreneur and philanthropist . With her brothers she built a newspaper empire. As a major donor and patron , she initiated the founding of the marine research facility Scripps Institution of Oceanography , the research institute Scripps Research and the Scripps College .

Life

Childhood and youth

Ellen Browning Scripps was born in London in 1836 to the bookbinder James Mogg Scripps, who came from a respected and educated family of printers . In 1844 the father, already twice widowed, emigrated to the USA with six children. There he settled in Rushville , Illinois , where other members of the Scripps family lived. The father married again. Ellen Scripps' siblings and half-siblings included James Edmund Scripps (1835-1906), her eldest brother, and the youngest member of the family, her half-brother Edward Willis Scripps (1856-1926), who later became a noted journalist and founder of the media empire EW Scripps Company and with which she had a particularly close relationship throughout her life.

Old main building of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Photographer: Jimmy Thomas

When she was sixteen or seventeen, Ellen Scripps began teaching. She used her savings from 1856 to study at Knox College , which she graduated after two years in 1859 with a mere certificate, since as a woman she was not allowed to acquire an academic degree there. She returned to Rushville, cared for her elderly father, and resumed teaching for the next eight years. During the Civil War , she volunteered for the Freedman's Association .

Journalist and newspaper publisher

She invested some of her savings to become a partner in the Detroit News, founded by her brother James . After her father's death, she moved to Detroit and began working for the newspaper as a proofreader and editor. On the front page it had a female section called Matters and Things .

At her instigation, her brother also hired her young half-brother, Edward. When he left Detroit to found his own paper, the Penny Press (later Cleveland Press , the first newspaper of what is now known as the EW Scripps Company ) in Cleveland , they invested in the company and ultimately had a significant stake in it. In 1881, she toured Europe and North Africa with her brother. She published her travel experiences in her column Miss Ellen's Miscellany . She later toured Europe again with her brother James and also made trips to Mexico and Cuba.

Moves to California, works as a major donor

In 1891 she moved to San Diego with her brother Edward and his family . In 1897, at the age of 60, she started her own household for the first time in her life when she and her sister Virginia Scripps (1852–1921) settled in La Jolla .

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Scripps Institution of Oceanography . The station in 1915. Photographer: William Emerson Ritter

After the death of her unmarried brother George Henry Scripps (1839-1900), who her a considerable fortune from investments in the Cleveland Press to use left worth $ 600,000, decided Ellen Scripps, the inheritance within the meaning of her brother, the sailors had been and was interested in science. Ellen and her sister Virginia were also interested in natural history. After Ellen learned from her youngest brother Edgar Wyllis Scripps that a biologist from Berkeley , William Ritter , wanted to set up a marine research station in San Diego , she contacted Ritter in 1903 and donated $ 1,500 a year for three years the station. In 1906 she donated $ 50,000 to the facility; In 1909 she announced a legacy of $ 250,000 to them. Ellen Scripps financed the streets and pier, as well as the first laboratory and library buildings. From 1903 to 1912, Ellen Scripps, her brother Edgar Wyllis Scripps and his son Robert Paine Scripps also raised the organization's entire running budget. When the station became part of the University of California in 1912, the university undertook to raise the budget from then on in the amount contributed by the Scripps family.

Further start-ups and donation activities

On the Scripps College campus (2012). To the side, the Balch Hall building complex named after Emily Greene Balch from the time it was founded. Photographer: Lure Photography

In addition to the Institute of Oceanography, Ellen Browning Scripps initiated the establishment of numerous other institutions, including Scripps College , the medical facilities Scripps Hospital and Scripps Clinic . The current research institute Scripps Research emerged from the latter , while the hospital developed into the non-profit organization Scripps Health . She also built the La Jolla Women's Club , the La Jolla library and the children's pool there , a lido with a breakwater dam. Land that they had bought and given to the city government for the construction of a park became today's Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve .

She also donated significant sums to the San Diego Zoo and acted as a donor to numerous religious institutions of various denominations, educational institutions and many other institutions and projects.

Although she planned to donate all of her fortune while she was alive, there was a substantial inheritance left on her death. Her nephew Robert Paine Scripps turned this into the endowment of the Ellen Browning Scripps Foundation , which continues the philanthropic work of its namesake.

Political and social positions

Ellen Browning Scripps continued to advocate for the women's movement , in particular for women's suffrage , against discrimination in general , and for pacifism . She disliked the term " philanthropist "; she used to refer to her donations as "investments".

literature

  • Edward Dessau Clarkson: Ellen Browning Scripps: a biography . 1958 (English, 246 pages, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Jack Casserly: Scripps, the Divided Dynasty . Donald I. Fine, 1993, ISBN 978-1-55611-378-9 (English, 236 pages).
  • Charles Preece: Edward Willis and Ellen Browning Scripps: an Unmatched Pair . Bookcrafters, 1999, ISBN 978-0-9619349-4-1 (English, 199 pages).
  • Molly McClain: Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy . University of Nebraska Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-8032-9595-7 (English, 366 pages).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ellen Browning Scripps (1836–1932). San Diego History Center, accessed June 23, 2019 . The text is mainly taken from Carl Heilbron: Biography (=  History of San Diego County . Vol. 2: Biography). San Diego Press Club, San Diego 1936, pp.  92-94 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Deborah Day: Ellen Browning Scripps Biography. (PDF) University of California, San Diego ; Scripps Institution of Oceanography , accessed June 23, 2019 .
  3. ^ History of Scripps Research. In: scripps.edu. Scripps Research , 2019, accessed June 30, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Who We Are. In: scripps.org. Scripps Health , accessed June 30, 2019 .
  5. ^ Ellen Browning Scripps: Founder of Scripps Memorial Hospital and Scripps Metabolic Clinic in La Jolla. In: scripps.org. Scripps Health , accessed June 30, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Jeremy Hollins, “Until Kingdom Come”: The Design and Construction of La Jolla's Children's Pool . In: Iris HW Engstrand, Molly McClain, Colin Fisher, Theodore Strathman (Eds.): The Journal of San Diego History . Vol. 51, No. 3 & 4 . University of San Diego, San Diego Historical Society, 2005, ISSN  0022-4383 , pp. 123–138 (English, friendsofthechildrenspool.com [PDF; 989 kB ]).
personal data
SURNAME Scripps, Ellen Browning
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist, suffragette, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1932
Place of death La Jolla , California