March 6, 1931

Detroit News Quilt History Project; Michigan State University Museum; Susan Salser

Detroit, Michigan, United States

An article about six pioneer women; Mabel Nelson, Ethel Campbell, Nellie Goshill, Jessie Olmsn, Emily Butterfield, and Lola B. Zacharias.

'Cimarron' - A Story of Pioneer Women and a New Land

Proving Their Success in the World of Business

The Story of Six Women Who Built Their Lives After Their Own Ideals of Happiness and Service
by Esther Beck McIntyre

Around half a dozen women who figure prominently in five Detroit organizations, affiliated with the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, to sponsor the fourth annual observance of National Business Women's Week, Marcy 8-14, are woven stories of achievement that serve as fairly adequate reasons for the success of their sex in a world that, only a couple of decades ago, was run almost entirely by men.

About that time, women stopped asking men to support them, and when they shrugged themselves free of their cotton wool wrappings, they cast a shadow that was fordained to change the entire social order.

If you wish this fact impressively re-established, go out to the milly edge of Farmington, climb the steps of a demure, garden-bound cottage, and knock at the white colonial door before you. If she happens to be at home, Miss Emily Butterfield will invite you into a long-low-raftered living room. It has bare floors, acattered with woven and home-spun rugs, some real antiques in the way of quaint tables, ancient ladder-back chairs, and wrought iron lanterns of Revolutionary War days, transformed into smart studio lamps.

A wood fire crackles and pops out embers cheerfully on the hearthstone. The wide fireplace, with its polished brass fireirons and amusing green hearth-broom, is made of field stones that built the church which originally stood on the site of Miss Butterfield's studio. The beautiful dull reds and saphire blues and deep blue-grays of the roughly cut blocks were deepened in color by the fire that eventually destroyed the church, which has been built by farmers from the surrounding countryside. Each hauled stones from his own farm as his particular contribution to the structure in which he was to worship.

"This stone is named for my little nephew," Miss Butterfield remarked, and told of the pleasant whim that prompted some friend to choose a stone from the fireplace and name if for himself, a blue one, a greenish-gray one, or a sparkling white block. It's a friendly fireplace, conducive to story-telling and reminiscences. There's even a sister-in-law named there.

Off the living room is Miss Butterfield's work room, where her work table and architect's tools are placed comfortable before windows which commance an eye-relaxing stretch of hill and valley and winding roadway.

And all this because one woman decided to build a life entirely after her own ideals of happiness and service. She stepped out of her father's comfortable house one fine day and built her white studio-home just across the driveway, after her own carefully drawn plans. She is a member of the firm of Butterfield & Butterfield, architects, who for many years occupied offices in Detroit. The offices are now in Pontiac, and Miss Butterfield spends a great deal of her time at work there. She and her father, Wells Duane Butterfield, designed the Farmington Methodist Church and two Highland Park High Schools, among other important structures. She is a graduate of Central High School and Syracuse University.

When Emily Helen Butterfield was a little girl, in her early teens also had a chance to do something which many little girls of her talents would have given their eyes for, almost.

She was allowed to go sketching occasionally with a group of Detroit artists, close friends of her father, important names in the early days of Detroit's art colony - William B. Conely, Percy Ives, Robert Hopkins. They let her exhibit once, with them, three little water colors, to her unending delight.

And that brings up another talent. Her water colors and pencil sketches beautify the walls of her studio. There are old-world gardens, gorgeous splashes of color. Debonair pencil sketches of the wharfside at Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The church tower in Bruges, beloved by Longfellow - they all give a charming distinction to her long green-rafter living room. This summer, in July, she will conduct a sketching class at O-Non-Eg-Wud Inn, en Encampment Island, above Mackinac in the St. Mary's River. And her newest hobby is bird-banding for the U.S. Biological Survey.

She will show you traps scattered about the garden below her kitchn window, and the strings of little metal bands numbered and marked by the Government, for different types of birds. She has banded song sparrows, starlings, bluejays, chickadees, robins, siskins, junckos and a dozen other feathered beauties this winter. A robin banded by her last year was found in Louisiana.

Her almost embarassing range of talents includes yet one more. Miss Butterfield is an authority on Heraldry, is author of a book on that subject, and has an article, "The Significance of College Heraldry," in a late issue of Ranta's Greek Exchange. She writes occasionally for "House and Garden," "Town and Country," and like publications.

Detroit Business Women's Club claims her as president, and with her days crammed full of business of being a woman, a housekeeper, an architect and a hobbyist, she apparently found it no hardship to take on another set of duties. She is a tranquil young woman, a most interesting and amiable individual and an expert in the art of living contentedly.

She points modestly to the fact that she is only one member of the five Detroit clubs affiliated with the National Federation who has achieved some satisfactory ends.

There is Mrs. Jessie Olm, of the Northwestern Business Woman's Club, who is owner and manager of the Totem Pole Inn, near Redford.

"I take ordinary cooks and train them myself," Mrs. Ohm remarked. "And I almost never change help. I've had the same waitress for the last seven years. We've all grown along with the tea-room."

Mrs. Ohm had no professional training. All her knowledge comes first-hand from the kitchen, and a little tea-room she opened, unaided, in Royal Oak after she sold her farm near Northville. The farm ashe managed while her husband was ill. After his death she sold it. "It was a paying proposition but hard work for a woman," she admits. This winter Mrs. Ohm has conducted a class in nutrition for women of her community, a volunteer work occasioned by the business depression, in which she gave practical instruction on feeding families at low cost.

Presiding over Brightmoor Community Center is another member of Northwester Business Women's Club, Mrs. Nellie W. Goshell. She worked without a telephone in her office for the first struggling years in the little community house, which now is one of three buildings. "There was no street lights or sewers here when we first opened as a health center for Brightmoor folk," Mrs. Goshell said, "We really did pioneer work. Now we have a full time boys' and girls' worker, and a family sevice worker. All Brightmoor organizations, churches, fraternities, schools, clubs and the like have representatives in the center. We sponsor home and garden contests. All the Christmas relief work of the community is done here - in fact it functions as a sort of godparent for its beneficiaries. The little girls flock in after school for their sewing and cooking classes and the boys follow their own pursuits with equal energy."

Any number of business and professional life of the city contend that membership in the business women's clubs and the national federation has been a prop and stimulation during the first baffling years of effort to achieve.

There is Miss Ethel Campbell, president of Polygon, who holds a supervisory position in the Signal departmetn of the Michigan Central Railroad. She is directly responsible for all clerical work in that department.

Miss Lola B. Zacharias, past president of Argus, owns her own business, which features the fitting of surgical and orthopedic garments used as corrective and post-operative measures.

Miss Lena Connor, of Argus, is passenger division clerk for the Grand Trunk Railway, the only one in the state employing a woman in this capacity. Miss Connor's job is the checking of fares against the proper tariffs in connection with tickets sold by the Grand Trunk Western Railway Agents, and allowing revenue to the different railroads over which the passenger travels, all of which requires the most complicated maze of information.

Dr. Bernardine Schefnecker, of Polygon, is president of the Michigan Branch of the Osteopathic Women's National Association and chairman for the Bureau of Clinics of the Osteopathic State Association. She has been giving her services to the Cormic Center Clinic twice a week this winter, where she gives free attention to children.

Miss Marion McClench, of Ann Arbor, National Federation president, sends this message as a part of her business gospel: "Keep physically fit, then you will not have to fear the fatal forties."

"Women cannot purify business alone. The responsibility to make American business life better belongs just as much to John Smith as to Jennie Jones.

From Emily Newell Blair, for eight years vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, comes this message: "American women must develop a new kind of feminism in the next 10 years. Thus far, they have accomplished very little with the new freedom that came to them through the ballot, or with that greater economic freedom which is theirs in the business world. They have been content to do things in a man's way. The obligation rests upon them to develop a new technique, a feminine technique - to think and set together as women.

Courtesy of The Detroit News Archives.