ELLEN BROWNING SCRIPPS

(1836-1932)

Younger sister of James Edmund Scripps

See ELLEN BROWNING SCRIPPS: NEW MONEY AND AMERICAN PHILANTHROPY by Molly McClain, 2017, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, Library of Congress 2017936202

Ellen was the philanthropic soul of the Scripps family. She also greatly assisted both James E Scripps in establishing the Detroit News and Edward W. Scripps in building the Scripps Publishing Company chain of newspapers in the Midwest and on the West Coast. As a consequence, by thrift and investment, she became one of the largest shareholders in the Scripps Publishing Company and perhaps the wealthiest resident of San Diego County, California. She never married and lived with her younger maiden half-sister Eliza Virginia (Jenny) Scripps (1852-1921). Before her death Ellen gave away almost her entire fortune.

Ellen was born in London, England, on South Molton Street in Mayfair. As a child, she emigrated to the states with her family and settled in Rushville, Illinois.

Ellen was well educated. She graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, with the intention of becoming a teacher. Ellen became the principal family caregiver to all of her younger siblings. She especially cared for and looked after her sickly half brother Edward Wyllis Scripps when he was very young and was largely responsible for his education. As a consequence, they bonded in a close relationship, virtually a partnership, which lasted until Edward’s death.

Ellen moved from Rushville to Detroit in 1865 giving up her career as a teacher to help her brother James and then to start the Detroit News in 1873, working long hours as a writer and editor. She never received from her brother James the recognition or stock to which she was entitled. This fact plus James’s disapproval of the aggressive and expensive business management practices of Edward W. Scripps, embittered Ellen toward James. To save money when starting the Detroit News,

James Scripps made a practice of employing his relatives for the simple reason that that he could pay them less and house them all together in one Detroit house. The initial management staff of the Detroit News was as follows:
Publisher …………………James E.
Business Mgr. …………George H.
Subscriptions…………..Edward W.
Copy Desk……………….Ellen B.

Everyone in the Scripps family in Detroit worked 12 hour days and lived together in the same house.

Following James Scripps taking back the management of the Detroit News after returning to Detroit from a long sojourn and firing Edward W. Scripps for running up promotional expenses in his absence, James also fired Ellen from the Detroit News in 1890 for taking James’s side in the management dispute. The following year, 1891, it was Ellen who persuaded Edward W. Scripps to purchase the MIRAMAR RANCH in San Diego County, and to leave Detroit for California. Ellen had discovered the natural beauty of San Diego County and fallen in love with it. Ellen helped Edward establish the Miramar Ranch where “exiled” and other members of the Scripps family relocated and continued to live together. 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. 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. Ellen believed that her brother thought that his philanthropy was a failure. McClain cites James Scripps’s two major benefactions as evidence of failure. The first Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church soon after it was completed was taken over by the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan with the Michigan Bishop as overseer. James had had many bitter disagreements with the Bishop on the mission of this church. This takeover so offended James Scripps that he literally walked out and never set foot in the church again even though it was located across the street and kitty corner to his main residence on Trumbull Avenue and Grand River Avenue.

Regarding his seminal role in founding and establishing the art collection of The Detroit Museum of Art in 1885 and 1889, Scripps’s role was received with some skepticism by the great and good people of Detroit. Scripps was viewed by many as an outsider who caused trouble for the social establishment of Detroit. In addition, his financial success and civic ventures made him seem a social climber and nouveau riche. 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. These rumors hurt James. 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. While this extra condition in his deed of gift has been hailed as farsighted by modern museum directors and curators, it was probably intended as James having the final word to answer and shut up his critics. Nevertheless, James did have the final word as only a very few of his donations have proved to be less than authentic and original, far less than for most collectors of his day.