It’s the last day in March, Women’s History Month is almost over. I’ve written about 26 NPC and four NPHC sorority women. The day ends with a P.E.O. who was not a sorority woman, although her daughter was a Kappa Alpha Theta and a member of the P.E.O. Sisterhood.
Bess Streeter Aldrich was initiated into P.E.O. chapter DL, Lincoln, Nebraska in December 1926. Her fourth book, A Lantern in Her Hand, had just been published, but she had been writing short stories since she was a young woman; she sold her first story when she was 14. At the time she was initiated, she had published about 100 short stories in the popular magazines of the day, among them Century, Ladies’ Home Journal, Women’s Home Companion, and American Magazine. The stories also appeared in British magazines.
December 2, 1928 Lincoln, Nebraska account of Chapter DL’s meeting.
Aldrich was born in 1881 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to pioneers who had travelled to Iowa from Illinois. She was the youngest of eight children. In 1901, she graduated from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), and spent five years teaching – four in Iowa and one in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also worked at her alma mater for a year, as an assistant supervisor in its primary training school.
In 1904, she met Captain Charles Sweetzer Aldrich, the youngest captain who served in the Spanish-American War. They wed on September 24, 1907. After living in Tipton, Iowa, for a short time, they moved to Elmwood, Nebraska, where her husband was a banker and a lawyer. They had a daughter, Mary Eleanor (a Kappa Alpha Theta at UNL), and three sons – James, Charles, and Robert.
Captain Aldrich died suddenly in May 1925 and Bess Streeter Aldrich turned her hobby of writing into a career to support her family. When he was growing up, Robert, the youngest child, who was four when his father died, thought that all mothers wrote.
During her early years writing she used a pseudonym Margaret Dean Stevens. In 1918, she began using her own name.
It is said that she sold every short story and novel wrote. When a story was rejected, she would rewrite it. One story, The Man Who Caught the Weather, was rejected 28 times. When it was finally accepted by the Century, it was chosen for the 1931 O. Henry Award volume.
Bess Streeter Aldrich, circa 1920s
Aldrich belonged to many organizations – Nebraska State Writers’ Guild, Women’s Press Club of Omaha, Southern California Press Club, Midland Authors, Iowa Authors, Quill Club, Altrusa, Eastern Star, Sorosis Club, Theta Sigma Phi, Chi Delta Phi, Lotus Club, and she was the only honorary member of the Nebraska State Press Association.
She died in 1954 at the age of 74. In 1973, she was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. A report of the event in the December 1973 P.E.O. Record has a quote from Aldrich’s daughter, Mary Aldrich Beechner, who was a member of her mother’s chapter, “P.E.O. meant so much to my mother – more than any other organization she belonged to. I wish to share her honor with P.E.O.” Bertha Hill, Chapter CS, Nebraska, and former Nebraska State Chapter Treasurer, gave an address at the induction ceremony. Aldrich’s family presented a bust of Aldrich to the State of Nebraska.
Bess Streeter Aldrich’s book on a shelf in Kerr Lounge at the P.E.O. Executive Office
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Did you know that Nebraska was P.E.O. first state chapter? Or that Hattie Briggs Bousquet’s sister-in-law was a president of Nebraska State Chapter? Did you know that those early State Chapters weren’t called State Chapters? To learn more about P.E.O. history, preorder a copy of We Who Are Sisters.
