Ellen browning scripps biography of nancy
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We are also one of the largest employers in San Diego, with 3,000 affiliated physicians and nearly 17,000 employees, and is recognized as one of the country’s best companies to work for.
When Mercy Hospital joined our organization in 1995, it was a perfect match not just in our shared mission, but also in our origins.
Of course, we are all familiar with the results of her keen interest in medicine.
In 1924, while recovering from a broken hip in a poorly equipped sanitarium in La Jolla, Miss Ellen determined to build the finest hospital she could for the part of the world she had come to love. In 1896/1897 Ellen built her own house, a Victorian shingle style “cottage” which she named South Molton Villa in the seaside town of La Jolla, California.
NOTE: Ellen Scripps spent part of each year from 1881-1897 traveling throughout the United States, North Africa (with an emphasis on Egypt), the Near East, Europe, Cuba and Mexico.
The following is a chronology of the life of Ellen Browning Scripps from Molly McClain’s biography, ELLEN BROWNING SCRIPPS, New Money and American Philanthropy:
1836 Born in London, England
1844 Moved with her family to Rushville, Illinois
1859 Graduated from Knox College
1865 Moved to Detroit to join her brother James
1873 Detroit Evening News founded
1878 Cleveland Press founded (by E.
W. Scripps and John Scripps Sweeney)
1881 Cincinnati Post founded (by E.W. Scripps)
1890 Scripps-McRae League (of newspapers, included papers in St. Louis and Chicago
1891 Established MIRAMAR RANCH in San Diego, California, with E.W. Scripps
1896 Established her home, South Molton Villa, in la Jolla, California
1899 Co- organized the LA JOLLA WOMEN’S CLUB
1902 Newspaper Enterprise Association founded (successors to Scripps Publishing Company (?))
1906 Ellen endowed SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY
1907 E.W.
Scripps founded the UNITED PRESS wire service to distribute news copy nationally with out the exclusive and exclusionary limitations for service provided by the Associated Press.
1909 Founded The BISHOP’S SCHOOL for girls in La Jolla with her sister Eliza Virginia Scripps
1914 endowed a lecture series at Pomona College
1915 fire destroyed her home in La Jolla , but she rebuilt in a new international all concrete style South Molton Villa II… In addition in 1915 in La Jolla she 1) donated money for Scripps Pier and aquarium, 2) founded and built the LA JOLLA PLAYGROUND & COMMUNITY HOUSE, 3) financed a new La Jolla Woman’s Club building… these new public facilities were built in close proximity to her house by her architect Irving J.
Gill in a similar international concrete style which created visually a civic community with her house in the center.
COMMENT possibly this was the seed of an idea or model for the latter Cranbrook Community?
1916 donated land to YMCA camp at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California
1917 WORLD WAR I …funded the YMCA’s Hostess House at Camp Kearny for soldiers and started a chapter of the Red Cross in La Jolla
1918 as a direct result of the demands for healthcare during the war and to serve the influx of new residents, she funded and later endowed the SCRIPPS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
1919 Funded the Egypt Exploration Society and donated books and antiquities to the San Diego Museum Association
NOTE: Ellen’s interests in art were principally in Egyptian archeology and California School contemporary artists whom she patronized.
1920-1932 Funded the SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY
1921 funds construction of the ATHENAEUM MUSIC AND ARTS LIBRARY in La Jolla
In 1921 Ellen purchases and donates over 200 acres to TORREY PINES STATE
RESERVE to protect from commercial construction & highway encroachments
1921 Eliza Virginia Scripps, her sister and constant companion, dies
1922 funded construction of the SAN DIEGO ZOO
1923 financed the construction of TORREY PINES LODGE in the Torrey Pines Reserve and founded Scripps Memorial park in Rushville, Illinois
1924 partially opened her home to the public by constructing a lath house and public tea room on her La Jolla property
1926 founded and endowed SCRIPPS COLLEGE for women on the Pomona colleges campus… in addition this year she financed a new building for the San Diego YMCA
1926 Edward W.
Scripps died
1926 TIME MAGAZINE FRONT COVER feature issue of TIME Magazine, February 1926, with Ellen’s photo age 89 on the front cover and a lengthy article touting her endowment of Scripps College.
1929 donated the tower and chimes for St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church near her home
1930 donated an athletic field at La Jolla High School
1931 financed the construction of a public Children’s Pool
and donated the Cottage-Retreat for Women Students (SDSU)
1932 Died in La Jolla, California
Ellen was a life long feminist, early suffragette, champion of education for women, San Diego County civic booster and leader, caregiver, who also helped to build the largest chain of newspapers serving the Midwest and West Coast.
After graduation, she took a position as a school teacher in Rushville. She pioneered philanthropy as a form of social advocacy and for that she made the front cover of Time magazine.
COMMENT: If any one in the Scripps/Booth Clan served as an exemplar of the best in public philanthropy, it was Ellen Browning Scripps.
RE: James E.
Scripps as a philanthropist:
In her biography of Ellen Browning Scripps, Molly McClain states that Ellen believed that James Scripps was bitterly disappointed that his efforts at philanthropy were not appreciated in his lifetime. As her brothers continued building the newspapers, Cleveland Press, St. Louis Chronicle, Cincinnati Post, that would eventually grow to a 24-paper major newspaper chain, Miss Ellen worked beside them and became a wealthy woman.
Her move to La Jolla in 1896 set the stage for the philanthropic legacy that was to flow from this amassed wealth.
Like Scripps, Mercy Hospital was founded in 1890 by another brilliant woman dedicated to helping others, Mother Mary Michael Cummings of the Sisters of Mercy.
Today, our donors help make progress possible.
To answer his art critics it should be noted that James Scripps alone of the early museum founders and donors specified that if any of his donations were found not to be originals or the best example of the artist’s work, then the museum was free to dispose of them and exchange the proceeds for better examples. Some in Detroit society spread rumors that some of the pictures James lent and later donated to the Detroit Museum of Art were not originals, but copies.
Even then, hers was a pursuit of education and knowledge. Her formal education was secured at several local private schools and a seminary in Rushville, She matriculated at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, in 1856 and was graduated therefrom in 1859. The Athenaeum Music and Arts Library, La Jolla Public Library, Scripps College, Children’s Pool, Natural History Museum and La Jolla High School were also developed from her generous gifts.
To protect the unique and rare Torrey pine tree for future generations, Miss Ellen purchased a tract of land and gave it to the state with the provision that the parcel, now called Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, remain undeveloped forever.
James had had many bitter disagreements with the Bishop on the mission of this church. Miss Scripps started as a proof-reader, working in this capacity all day, spending her evenings preparing miscellany for use the following day. Although it had a very humble beginning — a four-page, six-column sheet — it has become one of the most successful newspapers in the country.
La Jolla’s Ellen Browning Scripps, at age 89, became a member of that exclusive club on February 22, 1926. She was a great believer in, and an active supporter of, the national recreation movement.
Miss Scripps died at La Jolla, August 3, 1932.
[from Heilbron, Carl. Its editor, E.W., said that on days when news was dull, “Ellen’s budget often was a lifesaver.” She also joined her brother, E.W., in founding other newspapers, continuing to invest her savings in many of them.
Her father, one of the foremost bookbinders in the city of London, came to this country from England in 1844, with six motherless children, aged three to thirteen, in a sailing vessel, the voyage occupying some six weeks. In La Jolla, where she made her home the last thirty-five years of her life, her public spirit stands immortalized in the gifts she made for the benefit of the public, among them the Woman’s Club, the Public Library, the Scripps Memorial Hospital and Metabolic Clinic, the Bishop’s School, the Community House and Playgrounds, Children’s Pool, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and financial aid in building the churches in that community; in San Diego, the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Garden and Research Laboratory located in Balboa Park, and the Welfare Building, housing the welfare activities of the city.
She became interested in Pomona College at Claremont, California, making many gifts to it.
In the face of all this, Miss Scripps put her savings into the new venture, having faith in its outcome. Her father having been taken ill in 1870, she returned to Rushville to care for him and continued to do so until he died in May, 1873. Scripps was viewed by many as an outsider who caused trouble for the social establishment of Detroit.
At that time the country was suffering a severe depression and the public at large was in a panicky state of mind, drawing money out of banks and refusing to invest in projects of any kind.