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Logan County Pioneers:

Harrington Emerson, Fleming
 


In 1880 Lincoln, Nebraska, Harrington is a professor, 27, born in New Jersey, FLorence is 20 born in Michigan.

HARRINGTON EMERSON, professor of modern languages in the Nebraska State University, was born in Trenton, N. J., August 2, 1853. He was the eldest son of Edwin Emerson, of New York, eldest son of James Emerson, who came from Great Britain about the year 1808. His mother, Mary L. Ingham, was the youngest daughter of Samuel D. Ingham and was born in Washington, D. C., when her father was Secretary of the Treasury, under Jackson. Edwin Emerson, a graduate of Princeton College and of the Princeton Theological Seminary, settled in Greencastle, Penn., in 1852, as the Pastor of the Presbyterian Church. In 1860 he was called to the chairs of mental and moral philosophy and English literature, in the Troy University, N. Y. His health failed soon after and receiving leave of absence from the trustees he removed with his family to Europe for the better education of his children. The subject of this sketch then nine years old was placed in a Paris day school, which he attended for four years, his vacations being spent in travel. In 1867 he entered the military school of the Moravian Brotherhood, at Neuwied, on the Rhine. This is perhaps the strictest school in Europe. At the end of eighteen months he removed to Dresden and continued his studies under private tutors till the year 1871, when after having spent a year in traveling, visiting Italy and the Levant, he entered the mechanical engineering course of the Polytechnic School in Munich, continuing, however, linguistic studies, completing three full years in the Polytechnic, he devoted the last year of his stay abroad entirely to literary studies, spending six months in Italy and the winter in Greece. On May 30, 1876, he reached the United States and three weeks later was appointed instructor in modern languages in the State University of Nebraska. At the end of the first year he was promoted to the full professorship. He was married in Omaha, Neb., June 24, 1879, to Miss Florence Brooks, of Omaha, only daughter of D. C. Brooks. They have one son, Raffe Floresstan, born November 3, 1880. In the University Prof. Emerson has been prominently identified with the party of progress, who advocate a high standard of scholarship, improved methods of teaching and an unsectarian and civil system of government, as opposed to the conservative party composed of the older professors, who oppose all change and advocate a sectarian and parental system of government.

Harrington Emerson, age 26, born at Trenton, N.J. to Edwin Emerson and Mary Louise Ingham, married Florence Brooks, 19 born at Ann Arbor Michigan to D.C. Brooks and Harriette Brier, iin Omaha on June 24, 1879. Witnesses were Datus C. Brooks and Samuel D.J. Emerson of Milford.

In 1885 Keith County, Nebraska, Harrington is farming, 33, with Florence 25, and Raff 4.

Harrington cash-claimed a quarter in sections 9 and 10, 8N 49W in 1890.


In 1900 Richmond County, New York, "Edward Emerson", a journalist born March 1865 in Germany, married ten years to Florence March 1866 Michigan, have had five kids, three living. Gwendol Sept 189 New York, and Sidney March 1892 New York. Datus Brooks born July 1836 in New York widowed, is with them.
So Florence must have split with Harrington 1885-1890, and then married his brother.

"Sidney Brooks (born December 20, 1892) was a member of the Order of ‘76. He was the son of German National Socialist agent Colonel Edwin Emerson and used his mother’s maiden name. Sidney Brooks was the head of the research bureau of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT). He was also Director of the Bureau of Economic Research for the Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committee. From 1917 to 1919 Brooks served in the United States Army. "
On February 22, 1934, the Republican Party merged their Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees into a single organization independent of the Republican National Committee.

Senator Daniel Hastings of Delaware and Representative Chester Bolton announced the merger. Just before the merger, the two campaign committees hired Sidney Brooks, the long-time head of research at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). ITT was one of many American corporations that went to extraordinary means to continue trading with the Nazis after war broke out.

Shortly after Brooks took charge, he made a frantic visit to New York. On March 4, 1934, he went to Room 830 of the Hotel Edison, a room rented to a Mr. William Goodales of Los Angles. Goodales was in fact William Dudley Pelly. The meeting concluded with an agreement to merge the Order of 76 with the Silver Shirts. Later Brooks would stop at 17 Battery Place, the address of the German Consulate General.

Brooks was a member of the Order of 76, a pro-fascist group. The Order of 76 application required the fingerprints of the proposed member, and certain details of their life. Brooks' application revealed that he was the son of Nazi agent Colonel Edwin Emerson and that he chose to use his mother's maiden name to conceal his father's identity. Emerson was a major financial backer of Furholzer and his paper.




"Edwin Emerson Jr. was born in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. His father Edwin Emerson was an American professor and a graduate of Princeton University, head of his class in 1846.[2] His mother was Mary Louise Ingham, the daughter of Samuel Ingham who was Secretary of the Treasury during the Andrew Jackson administration. "
"From the San Francisco Call, May 17, 1906, page 3. When word of the local disaster reached the East Colonel Edwin Emerson Jr. wired a proposal of marriage to Miss Mary Edith Griswold of this city. Then without awaiting an answer he boarded a train and hastened to the city of ruin, anxiety for the safety of the girl he loved forbidding even the delay of an hour. Had the suitor tarried until Miss Griswold's answer reached him things might have been different, for she declined his offer in a letter that did not reach him until yesterday, just a few moments before they were married at the home of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson on Lombard and Hyde streets. When Emerson reached San Francisco, ignorant of the young lady's decision, he repeated the message that had been consigned to the wires and this time he won. The wedding yesterday was a pretty and simple affair. The home in which it took place is on the brow of Russian Hill in the heart of a district of debris. A number of friends of both the young people came through streets of ashes to witness the ceremony and telegrams of congratulation came from many who could not be present, including President Roosevelt and General Shafter. Rev. Dr. John Bakewell of Trinity Church, Oakland, performed the ceremoney. Miss Griswold was attended by her sister, Miss Ora Griswold, and the groom was attended by Edward Salisbury Field. Dr. David Starr Jordan gave the bride away. The couple will remain in this city for a short time and will then make a tour of the East. It is the intention of Mr. Emerson to locate in this city. The groom is from New York City and has won distinction as soldier, war correspondent and lecturer. He was with Roosevelt in Cuba and did extensive work as a correspondent during the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars. He received his education at Harvard and recently has been very successful throughout the country as a lecturer. At the present time he is representing the California and Century clubs of New York City in the distribution of funds raised by them. Miss Griswold is a Californian and is well known for her literary ability. She was assistant editor of the Sunset Magazine for a number of years and has written much of worth. Her father is interested in gold mines in Ameca, Mexico. "
Edwin died in 1959

Lincoln Nebraska, December 1900
"Vagaries. A little book bound in white, lettered in black, with a yellow moon floating in a green gray night of shadowy bats is a collection of light short stories by Mrs. Florence Brooks Emerson, formerly or Omaha. Mr. Datus Brooks, her father, was formerly editor of the Omaha Republican. Mrs. Emerson was a student at the state university in the early eighties. She has lived in New York for perhaps the last ten years.

A vagary, and every resident of a state which has the lowest per cent of illiteracy of the whole forty-five, knows that vagary is accented on the second syllable, is a wandering or strolling, and hence a wandering of the thoughts, a wild freak, a whim. And about a whim there is an individuality, a color that the reasonable, expected actions of life do not have. If it were not for Dr. Samuel Johnson's whims we should not feel that we know him so well and the great lexicographer might then be indistinguishably confused with Bozzy, Goldsmith, Pope and others of his time. A fragrance of original personality lingers about this book of stories, that is very pleasant both to the stranger and to Mrs. Emerson's friends. The pains and disappointments of life as they come to women and are felt by women Mrs. Emerson expresses finally with satisfaction. Like an unknown sonata, the first time heard by one not technically educated, the first reading of her paragraphs is a jumble and the melody is overlooked. A little patience, a little pertinacious insistence upon a sympathetic reading of the lines and her meaning is clenr.

One story is about a woman whose husband is lighting in Cuba. She stands on a balcony and looks out to sea: "The shadows as of an eternal absence darkened her heart; for absence is never bridged; it makes a chasm between old and new; all is old on the brink wc have left; all is past. The one we meet is not the one who said farewell." This change which takes place in the friendships and loves of the separated is one of the curious, unwelcome and disputed phenomena of life and love. The chasm of incommunicable spiritual experiences which separates friends who are miles apart, from the intimacy of the hour of separation has puzzled the most devoted and loyal.

Another story is about a Spanish general in Cuba who is returning to Spain on account of the American occupation and he is leaving his Cuban lady in Havana. The general's parrot is shrieking in the court while the general is eating his breakfast, just before his ship embarks for Spain. "A whole plantation household of Creole women, brats, negroes, flashed in brief exposures, through the sultry morning, struck out of nothingness by the caricatures of the coterie's chatter. Hints of women's days, ranging from sob to song; lullaby and cajolery; silly ranting and ribald singing, hypocritical and tender, flashed wantonly out of the soulless void of the Creature's being." The reader who is lacking in time and who is first of all an explorer and keeps a log of soundings of latitude and longitude, who makes a chart of journeys into literature, will not care for Mrs. Emerson's sketches, they are parables, impressions, color-improvisations. They end abruptly and the author does not conform to predilections for smooth finish, definiteness, and completed experiences and romances. Her stories end as the bird lifts his wings and whether he flies or dabs his beak under his wing to smooth a ruffled feather, we do not know, for the story ends."


Datus "was married in 1858 to Harriet Sophia Brewer, of Dundee, Michigan, who died while they were at Omaha. Not long after her death he removed to New York, where he lived in retirement with his only daughter, Mrs. Edwin Emerson, wife of the well-known correspondent of "Leslie's Weekly." He died at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, August 1, 1901. "

Harrington Emerson (1853-1931) was one of America's pioneers in industrial engineering and management and organizational theory. His major contributions were to install his management methods at many industrial firms and to promote the ideas of scientific management and efficiency to a mass audience. One of the most erudite and cosmopolitan personalities associated with the scientific management movement, Emerson established a modestly successful consulting business as an efficiency engineer, an author of books on industrial efficiency, and a promoter and popularizer of the movement. Nearly two hundred companies adopted various features of the Emerson Efficiency system, which included production routing procedures, standardized working conditions and tasks, time and motion studies, and a bonus plan which raised workers' wages in accordance with greater efficiency and productivity. In conjunction with his consulting work, Harrington Emerson evolved an elaborate philosophy of efficiency and disseminated his ideas in books and periodicals. As a writer and lecturer, he broadened the public understanding of scientific management and defined a larger social role for engineers beyond the solution of technical problems.

Emerson was born on August 2, 1853 in Trenton, New Jersey. The eldest of six children reared by Edwin and Mary Louisa Emerson, he descended from Anglo-Irish political and religious dissenters on his father's side of the family. His mother's forebears were prominent Pennsylvania Quakers, long active in Bucks County society and politics. Emerson's maternal grandfather, Samuel Delucenna Ingham, had served two years as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in Andrew Jackson's first administration before amassing a fortune as the founder and owner of the Hazleton Coal and Railroad Company. Following Ingham's death in 1860, the Emerson family inherited a substantial trust fund. The inheritance enabled Edwin, a Princeton-educated clergyman and academician, to pursue full-time academic study and to direct the educational development of his children.

Harrington Emerson received a continental European education. From 1862 to 1876 he studied under tutors and attended private schools in England, France, Italy, and Greece. In addition to learning languages and archeology, he attended engineering classes in the Royal Bavarian Polytechnique from 1872 to 1875. Emerson returned to the U.S. in 1876 and acquired a position as Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Nebraska. His secular and progressive educational ideas clashed with the religious fundamentalism of the University regents, and he was dismissed from the faculty in 1882. Emerson embarked upon a career as a frontier banker, land speculator, tax agent and troubleshooter for the Union Pacific and Burlington and Missouri railroads. His work took place during the settlement of Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. Emerson established his own private loan company in 1883 and in partnership with his brother Samuel formed a land company which invested in future town sites in western Nebraska. As emigration agent for the Union Pacific Railroad, surveyor with the Lincoln Land Company, and land agent for the Burlington and Missouri Railroad in Keith County, Nebraska, Emerson gained invaluable knowledge of choice lands. The Emersons invested $70,000 in the project before drought and crop failures dropped crop prices and interrupted mortgage payments. As a result, Emerson lost his first fortune.

Undaunted, Emerson joined the Reliance Trust Company of Sioux City, Iowa which underwrote farm mortgages and tax liens on Colorado farm properties. He served as liaison between the company's western offices and eastern financiers who floated the concern. The company failed during the Panic of 1893. During the next two years Emerson divided his time between representing an English investment syndicate in America and campaigning in the presidential election of 1896. Emerson investigated over one hundred mining and manufacturing concerns throughout North America and Mexico in an attempt to obtain English capital for developing American industries. Despite his failure to underwrite the financing of a single large company, his investigations brought him broad knowledge of industrial conditions and created a foundation for his later work as an industrial efficiency consultant. Emerson joined William Jennings Bryan's election campaign for U.S. President. The two had become acquainted during Emerson's years on the University of Nebraska faculty. Both had been active in the Democratic Party and in Nebraska state politics. In 1888, Emerson and Bryan canvassed Nebraska as stump speakers on behalf of the Democratic Party. Although a supporter of Grover Cleveland during the 1880s, Emerson became a silver currency advocate and ardently supported Bryan when the latter declared his candidacy. Emerson organized political rallies, directed campaign activities, and solicited campaign funds from relatives, friends, and business associates.

Bryan's defeat in 1896 dashed Emerson's hopes for obtaining patronage and a fortune from a silver-based monetary system. Shortly after the campaign, Emerson began mechanical engineering work, devoting exclusive attention to the application of electric and diesel power to marine navigation. He obtained a position with the General Electric Storage Battery Company of New York in 1897 to pursue this line of investigation. At the company's request, Emerson moved to Seattle, Washington and experimented with the navigation of electric powered ocean vessels.

Attracted by the lure of the Alaskan Gold Rush in 1897, Emerson and several business associates undertook a variety of speculative projects in the Alaskan Territory. These ventures included operating a shuttle steamer between Seattle and the Alaskan gold fields, managing a postal route between Juneau and Skagway, and seeking investors to lease mining properties in Alaska. One of Emerson's most ambitious projects involved the proposed construction of a trans-Pacific telegraphic cable from Seattle to the Philippines via Alaska. Each of these projects floundered, resulting in financial and legal complications for Emerson and his business partners. Emerson took up industrial consulting work to defray the debts incurred from his Alaskan projects.

After a successful tenure as a general manager of a small Pennsylvania glass factory in 1900, Emerson resolved to take up efficiency engineering as a profession. Through meetings of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he became personally acquainted with the pioneering work of Frederick W. Taylor, the founder of scientific management, ans assimilated much of the methodology for standardizing work and remunerating workers in accordance with productivity. Emerson's most notable consulting assignment was the reorganization of the machine and locomotive repair shops of the sprawling Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Three years in duration (1904-1907), this work involved the first successful application of scientific management to a large railroad system. Engineering and railroad periodicals gave much attention to the system of shop betterment which he installed. Emerson also developed and implemented a bonus pay system which was widely accepted in a number of industries. As a result of his successful work for the Atchison, Topeka, Emerson began to attract an industrial clientele. During his tenure as a Standard Practice Engineer for the American Locomotive Company, Emerson also founded the Emerson Company. This company hired out associate consulting engineers to other firms on a contract basis. Emerson associates were entrusted with the tasks of standardizing work procedures and applying the Emerson bonus plan for client companies. Between 1907 and 1910, the Emerson Company achieved modest success. The company consulted over 200 corporations, submitting reports for which they were paid twenty-five million dollars. Emerson efficiency methods were applied to department stores, hospitals, colleges, and municipal governments. Between 1911 and 1920 Emerson's firm averaged annual earnings of over $100,000.00. Emerson occupied himself with soliciting business and managing the financial affairs of the company, leaving the consulting work to his associates. Branch offices were established in New York, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.

Attempting to promote his company and to distinguish his methods from those of Taylor, Emerson published three books: Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages (1909); The Twelve Principles of Efficiency (1912); and Colonel Schoonmaker and the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (1913). The 1910 Eastern Freight Case brought much wider public attention to Emerson's ideas than ever before. Emerson served as Louis D. Brandeis's star witness in the appeal of major eastern trunk railroads to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a rate increase. Emerson testified that the railroads wasted one million dollars daily by not applying efficiency methods. His brief against the railroads won wide acclaim and marked the growth in public awareness of scientific management. In the wake of the Freight Case, Emerson became known as the High Priest of Efficiency. He spoke more frequently about his effficiency ideas to businessmen, civil organizations, and management and engineering students. In 1912, Emerson helped to found the New York Efficiency Society which promoted and disseminated the ideals of reform through scientific management. In addition to business success. Emerson emjoyed growing stature in the engineering profession.

He was identified as one of the pioneers of modern management and industrial engineering, along with Taylor, H. L. Gantt, and Frank Gilbreth. Emerson joined these and other progressive engineers in founding the Society of Industrial Engineers in 1917. Emerson also participated in the engineering profession's defense of scientific management against public misconception and antagonism from labor organizations. He testified in 1912 before a U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the impact of scientific management on labor. He also submitted a statement in 1914 to the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, later undergoing cross-examination as well. Emerson prepared lectures and pamphlets which stressed efficiency and patriotism in production for World War I. In 1919 Emerson reorganized the Emerson Company into the Emerson Engineers and continued the consulting work for American manufacturing firms that his company had done before and during World War I. Disagreements among Emerson and his partners in the Emerson Engineers, however, resulted in his being removed from the firm in 1925. Emerson spent most of his time from 1919 to 1931 on special projects, many of them in foreign countries. The overseas work concerned the development of transportation, industry, and communication. Between 1921 and 1928, he advised government leaders and transportation ministries in China, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Emerson drafted and submitted plans and proposals for financing these projects at a minimum expense to the host country. Using his contacts with influential industrialists and financiers, he served as a liaison between American companies seeking investment opportunities and those countries lacking engineering and financial resources for industrial development. Through the decade of the 1920s, Emerson publicized the potential for promoting efficiency on a global scale. He was particularly optimistic that the Soviet Union's bureaucratic and centralized state offered a uniquely fertile ground for applying scientific management and efficiency principles in a systematic fashion. Emerson also took part in important projects in the United States during the 1920s. He was one of eighteen prominent engineers chosen by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1921 to serve on a committee investigating the elimination of waste in industry. Emerson's responsibility for this project was to study problems in the railroad and coal industries, but due to project financial problems, his report was not published. Emerson saw himself in this period as an efficiency educator. In 1924, he re-wrote and marketed an earlier version of a correspondence course in human engineering. Under the aegis of the Emerson Institute, Emerson's home study course in personal efficiency had a nationwide subscription of 40,000 in 1925. Despite the fact that the Institute became insolvent in 1928, Emerson planned to have his course translated and marketed in the Soviet Union and Poland. In the final years of his life, Emerson turned his attention to writing his memoirs, overseeing his family's investments in Japanese securities, and considering solutions to unemployment in the initial phases of the 1930s depression. He continued his entrepreneurial pursuits by dabbling in Florida land purchases and by developing plans for a high speed monorail. As an elder statesman of the efficiency movement, he felt troubled by the evidence that his reputation had been overshadowed by that of Taylor.

Up to his death in May, 1931, he documented his contributions to scientific management and industrial engineering in his manuscript autobiography, in essays, and in personal letters.

Emerson was married twice: in the 1870s to Florence Brooks and in 1895 to Mary Crawford Supple. His son Raffe was born in 1880. Emerson and Mary Supple had three daughters: Louise, Isabel, and Margaret.


In 1891 and 1893 Denver, Harrington is the secretary for Reliance Trust Co, 84 Kittredge Bldg.
Samuel D. Emerson is manager of Reliance Trust.

Harrington wrote a long article in the 1903 National Geographic about the road from Skagway to the Klondike, with the best maps I've seen.

In 1908 the American Engineer and Railroad Journal wrote about efficiency on the Santa Fe, including pioneers such as Harrington Emerson, H.W. Jacobs, Clive Hastings, C. H. Morrison, Raffe Emerson, J.F. Whiteford, and J.E. Epler.

In 1910 Monmouth County, New Jersey, Harrington is 51, married 15 years to Mary Emerson 40, Pennsylvania. Isabel is 13, Margaret 10, and Mary 8, all bthree born in Pennsylvania.

In 1918 Harrington Emerson, and Lieut. Raffe Emerson, U.S. N.A.S. were at at the Twelfth Annual Banquet of the Aero Club of America. Speakers were Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary....
In 1920 Harrington was chairman of the Auditing committee of the Aero Club. Lt. Raffe Emerson represented teh U.S. Navy in the National Balloon Race.
In 1930 New York City, Harrington and Mary have Isabell, now married to Frederick Laidlaw, 28, a literary writer.
.

Harrington Emerson 1853-1937 is buried in Bucks County, Pennsylvania # 113030694, with Mary (Crawford) Emerson 1854-1933 # 113030724.
1965 "Personal and business documents and publications of Harrington Emerson have been presented to the Pattee Library of The Pennsylvania State University by his daughter, Mrs. Frederick B. Laidlaw, wife of Frederick B. Laidlaw, assistant professor of English at the University. Mr. Emerson was an engineer, writer, lecturer, and teacher. He was the deviser of methods for reduction in cost of railroad and manufacturing operations and the author of numerous articles and books on "Efficiency," pre-dating the present profession of Industrial Engineering."


Social Security has a Raffe Emerson born November 3, 1880 in Lincoln to Harrington Emerson and Florence Brooks.

Raffe was in Philadelphia in 1920, married, in the navy.
In 1940 he's in Somerset County, New Jersey in a VA hospital, in Omaha Nebraska in 1935.
When he registered for WWII he said his reference was Mrs. Ray E. Emerson of 1738 S. 29TH, Omaha.
1933

A Nebraska Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority member was Rachel Manley (Mrs. Raffe Emerson). She was a '90 graduate of the University of Nebraska, and in 1917 was on her way to visit her brother, Robert Manley, '97, of Omaha.

In 1870 Marion County, Ohio, R. C. Manley is 27, a druggist, with Celina 26, Frank 3, Rachel 1. Charlotte Manley 24 is with them.

Celinda is buried in Rensselaer County, New York 1844-1872 # 112868567.

Rachel was in Lincoln in 1880, 12, with parents Robert C. and Celinda Manley. Robert 1843-1902 is buried in Lincoln, # 58680875, 1st Ohio Cavalry, Lieutenant.
1902 " Mrs. Belle Bechtol left for Tacoma, Washington, yesterday, where she will reside in the future. She is the daughter of R. C. Manley of this city."
1910 "Mrs. Belle Manley Bechtol, daughter of R. C. Manley, one of the pioneer citizens of Lincoln, died on Wednesday at Topeka, Kansas, and will be buried in this city today, beside her father who passed away in 1902. The service will be at 1:30 p. m. at Castle Roper and Matthews chapel, and will be conducted by the Rev. I. F. Roach, pastor of St. Paul's church. The interment will be at Wyuka. Mrs. Bechtol grew up in Lincoln and was a student at the state university for several years. In 1893 she married J. W. Bechtol and removed to Tacoma where sho resided for the greater part of the time until the death of Mr. Bechtol about three months ago. Mra. Bechtol is survived by her mother, Mrs. R. C. Manley of Omaha, and a sister, Mrs. Ray Emerson of Topeka, both of whom were with her at the time of her death; and by three brothers, Frank and Robert Manley of Omaha, and James C. Manley of Tacoma, All but the brother in Tacoma will be In Lincoln today."


Robert Manley married Mary H. in 1898, and she's buried in Lincoln 1847-1931 # 101695404.

March 12, 1931 "MANLEY, MARY H. Died Thursday morning at Omaha. She was eighty-three years of age. She was the widow of Robert C. Manley and a former resident of Lincoln. Funeral services will be held at 2 o'clock Saturday afternoon at Roberts’ chapel with interment in Wyuka."

Raffe 1880-1962 is buried in Long Island National, Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve WWI, # 2665781.
The Rachel E. Emerson 1867-1960 buried in Lincoln # 69925009 might be the same one.

"Mary Louise Harrington Emerson was born in 1901[1] in Philadelphia, the youngest of three daughters of Mary Crawford Suplee and Harrington Emerson (1853–1931).
Louise Emerson’s great grandfather, Samuel D. Ingham (on her mother’s side), was Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Jackson, the U.S.‘s seventh President (1829–1837). Emerson graduated from Barnard College in 1922, followed by three years of study at the Art Students League New York. During her studies at the League, she was particularly influenced by one of her teachers, Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876–1952). He was an outstanding American Scene artist, but also made quite a mark teaching in the 1920s and 1930s, his other students included Reginald Marsh, Edward Hopper and Isabel Bishop. She spent the summers of 1923 and 1924 at the The Ecoles d'Art Américaines at Fountainebleu, France, studying fresco painting.

Emerson was commissioned to execute many murals and frescoes in the Denver area, including, Kent School for Girls (1933), Morey Junior High School (1934) (still extant but in deplorable condition), the City and County Building (1935), the Church of the Holy Redeemer (1938), the Bamboo Lounge at the Cosmopolitan Hotel (1938) and the Robert W. Speer Memorial Hospital for Children (1940) (still extant, also in deplorable condition). She worked in tempera and oil, but fresco was Emerson’s preferred medium. Unfortunately, since frescoes are part of the architectural structure, many of them were lost when the buildings were torn down. Her shortest lived mural, however, was entitled The Nativity, painted on canvas and installed on the pediment of the City and County Building. As planned, it was only up for the Christmas season of 1935. The mural was 76 feet long and she completed it with the help of two assistants within two weeks after being asked to execute it. It was painted in sections in the basement of a Denver auditorium and it took three days to install. Additionally, in 1942, the Denver Defense Council called for volunteers to work in areas that people were best suited. Emerson volunteered to paint a mural for the Denver’s new USO Center and spent eight hours a day for three months painting a mural for the center. She pictured the peacetime pursuits of the then 26 United Nation countries who were then fighting the war. For this work the Governor of Colorado named her civilian “Hero of the Week”.

After her husband, artist Arnold Rönnebeck, died in 1947, she taught drawing and painting at Denver University. Her last public mural in Colorado was an abstract fresco for the lobby of Weld County Hospital in Greeley, Colorado in 1952. In 1954, once both of her children were married, Emerson moved to Bermuda and taught art at the Bermuda High School for Girls from 1955-1959. Her last mural was executed for St. Brendan’s Hospital in 1966. Unfortunately, this mural was destroyed sometime in the 1980s when the hospital was renovated. Emerson lived in Bermuda until 1973, returning to Denver where she remained until her death in 1980.


Louise 1901-1980 is buried in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the same cemetery as her parents. # 66583525.
Her husband Arnlold Ronnebeck 1884-1947 is also buried there # 66583524.


A niece of Harrington Emerson "Edith Emerson (July 27, 1888 – November 21, 1981) was an American painter, muralist, illustrator, writer, and curator. She was the life partner of acclaimed muralist Violet Oakley and served as the vice-president, president, and curator of the Woodmere Art Museum in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1940 to 1978."
"Emerson was born in Oxford, Ohio into a family of accomplished scholars and artists. Her father, Alfred Emerson, was an archaeologist and professor of classical archaeology whose career included positions at Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Cornell University. Her mother, Alice Edwards Emerson, was a pianist and music professor who taught at Wellesley College, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music (and its successor, Ithaca College), the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Hobart College. She had three siblings: Gertrude, a writer and editor of Asia Magazine; Willard, a banker; and Alfred Jr., an entomologist.[2][4] She traveled widely with her family to Japan, China, India, and Mexico."

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