A Woman of the Century: Carrie Gibford Shoaff

      

She was once called a “Woman of the Century.” 

     An inventor. An artist. Featured in a compendium of accomplished women leaders.

     How quickly - within a generation or two - even notable people slip into obscurity. Her name and accomplishments are forgotten today, but Caroline “Carrie” Gibford Shoaff (1849-1929) was an artist, teacher, author, potter, playwright, and newspaper correspondent. She was best known in her lifetime as the inventor of a method of manufacturing imitation Limoges china. Her method was used extensively to make plaques, souvenirs and advertising signs. 

     Limoges china dates to the seventeenth century in Limoges, France and is made of kaolin clay. It’s fired at very high temperatures, with a finish that is ideal for decoration. It acquired a cachet as the china desired by the rich and famous. The Haviland porcelain factory became the chief supplier of U.S. presidential china. Inventing an imitation would obviously be desirable to those who couldn't quite afford. the real thing.

Early Days 

     Carrie was born in a modest frame house at the corner of Matilda and Cherry Streets in Huntington, Indiana, the daughter of a hardware store clerk. Her mother died when she was nine months old; the family moved to Fort Wayne and her father remarried to Angela Porter, daughter of a fur trader, when she was five. She developed an early interest in art, which was probably encouraged by her stepmother. After Angela’s death, Angela was described in a 1918 newspaper article as “always a lover of studio life” and “an advocate of the Bohemian life.” She collected oil paintings, some by the adult Carrie. 

     Details about Carrie’s art education are sketchy at best, with mention simply that “after she learned to paint and draw, she turned her attention to the plastic arts.”

     Carrie married Urias S. Shoaff, called “Rie,” when she was twenty and moved back to Huntington with him where he was a dry goods merchant. He soon became a salesman for a Philadelphia-based dry goods company and traveled extensively on its behalf throughout the east and midwest.

     Perhaps this made it possible for Carrie to move to New York City in the 1870s. While there, she became the first woman correspondent for a Fort Wayne newspaper. In 1876 the Fort Wayne Gazette came under control of two brothers, Fred and David Keil. Fred would also operate a bookstore in the city for over twenty years. During their decade directing the newspaper’s growth, there was an increased interest in newspaper readership and they were open to the idea of a woman reporter/correspondent.

     Carrie wrote “special letters” from New York City, at the invitation of editor Silas B. McManus. She interviewed people she thought were interesting and Fort Wayne folks who were in New York. The letters were written anonymously or under pseudonyms, though. She and Rie eventually returned to Fort Wayne where they spent the rest of their lives. Silas McManus became an important figure in her life, and a friend. He led an informal Bohemian Club, of which Carrie was a member. It was “not a society club, but a group of interesting people who did things that were worthwhile," and “scorned parliamentary law,” she wrote after his death in 1917. They met for years in “Mac’s” home, the old mansion of Fort Wayne’s first mayor.

  

A Career in Art

   Carrie and Rie never had children, and that, and the fact that Rie was often on the road, freed her to do much of what she did. The concept of separate spheres for men and women came with the expectation of an extremely restricted role for women centered exclusively in the home. An interest in the arts, however, was considered compatible with being a wife and mother. But not being tied down with the demands of childrearing and a constantly present husband gave her work opportunities. 

     Once she was back in Fort Wayne, and using clay found along the banks of the Maumee River, Carrie developed her method of imitation Limoges with a glaze she developed herself. A 1978 state geologic report on the clays of Allen County said the county lacks the high-quality clays needed for china and high-temperature refractory products. Somehow though, she made it work and people said it was hard to distinguish between genuine Limoges and hers. She taught her methods to other women, providing them with a source of income, and she made the plaques, souvenir items and advertising signs with her porcelain. 

     A reporter in a Huntington newspaper interviewed her at an exhibit of her work and said her methods had been taught in St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago. He described an 18-inch tall urn and a pair of panels in relief that were included in the exhibit, a design of grapes and a spray of lilacs. 

     “To Mrs. Shoaff herself belongs the credit of this invention, and we feel that our little “Hoosier State” is indeed getting into the front ranks of the profession when we see results such as these,” the reporter said. 

     The first time her work was described in the press was actually a few years earlier, when she displayed some paintings at the bookstore of Fred Keil, the newspaper publisher. She had a three-panel screen. One panel was a copy of another artist’s work, a scene of hollyhocks. The second was original, featuring goldenrod against a decaying fence. “A cluster of woodbine in the lower right-hand corner, a few sprays of timothy grass and three or four white flowers complete a picture which is at once simple, artistic and effective,” the reporter said. He also liked the blending of blue and gray in the glimpse of sky. 

A Woman of the Century

     Carrie was included in an 1893 encyclopedia of accomplished women edited by Frances Willard and Mary Livermore called Woman of the Century. Frances and Mary were two of the most prominent women leaders of their time. Frances Willard was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the largest temperance group, and women’s group in the nation. Mary organized and was president of the Illinois Women’s Suffrage Association and founded a suffrage and temperance newspaper. 

     Their encyclopedia contained 1,470 biographical sketches. They wanted to document and educate the public as to the accomplishments of contemporary women. It is not a coincidence that more than half the women included never married or were widowed at a young age and did not remarry. They not only needed to make a living, but like Carrie, were ‘freed’ from society’s expected strictures to work. 

     Her entry said that, “She has received numerous invitations to open art-schools in New York and other large cities, but she remains in Fort Wayne, earning both fame and money.” The Fort Wayne paper said, “Our own people are well aware of the handsome offers that have been made to the artist to remove to the east and establish a studio, yet her interest in her home, where were the scenes of her disappointments and her final triumphs have overbalanced all, and she continues her work here.”

Personal Life

     By 1905, Indiana temperance workers succeeded in achieving some of the “driest” legislation in the country. Carrie made use of this and provided a glimpse into her personal life because of it. In July 1907 she filed an affidavit against saloon keeper Harry Wiebke for violating the Nicholson law. This law, passed in 1895, was strengthened in 1905 with the passage of the Moore amendment. The Nicholson law called for  a two-year waiting period between the application for a liquor license and its issue. Under the Moore amendment, anyone could protest the issuance of any liquor license, not just new applicants. 

     By this time Carrie’s husband Rie was 62 years old. She said he was impoverishing himself through drink. Most women suffered in silence. Her choice to take legal action and therefore put herself (and him) in the public eye surely wasn’t taken lightly. In her case against Wiebke, she said he ignored her request to stop selling intoxicants to Rie. 

     Days later, she crossed hairs with Wiebke again. An article described a stakeout by the Good Citizens League who were watching saloons, and “as a result, affidavits were sworn out against more than twenty saloon keepers. The list included Harry Wiebke, “who is already a defendant in a case pending trial on a warrant sworn out by Mrs. Carrie M. Shoaff.”

     Carrie, whom the reporter described as a determined woman, was standing on a corner with a  friend awaiting the streetcar “when a question arose as to whether Wiebke’s saloon was open, it being a Sunday night. Mrs. Shoaff concluded to find out and had no difficulty in opening the street door. Once inside, she saw the place full of men drinking.” She filed another affidavit against Wiebke the next day. Wiebke was a former member of the Fort Wayne City Council who the newspaper said was interested in working out a compromise with the citizens league, but they wanted the liquor laws strictly enforced. At stake for him was losing his liquor license as three violations carried a "three strikes and you're out" penalty.

     Today the temperance movement is generally perceived as a moralistic crusade by prudes and religious fanatics. During its heyday, its leaders not only believed that alcohol abstinence would lead to better health, but they saw it as a way to create a just society. The vast majority of women were almost totally financially dependent on men and unable to get jobs that could support a family. The high rates of alcoholism left women and children impoverished and suffering.

     Ironically, though, Carrie died in 1929 before her husband, and was buried at Lindenwood Cemetery.

Note: Where does she fit in my family tree? This is a loose connection, a peripheral collateral relative. Carrie was the sister-in-law of Stella Lipes. Stella was my great-great-grandfather’s cousin, and the granddaughter of Myron F. Barbour and Jane Suttenfield. 

Sources:

     Bleuer, N.K. and Michael C. Moore. Environmental Geology of Fort Wayne, Indiana Special Report 13, Bloomington, Indiana: State of Indiana, Department of Natural Resources, 1978. 

     Bushnell, Scott M.  Hard News, Heartfelt Opinions: A History of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007.

     Evans, Christopher H. “How Frances Willard Shaped Feminism By Leading the 19th Century Temperance Movement,” The Conversation, 1 March 2023, https://theconversation.com/how-frances-willard-shaped-feminism-by-leading-the-19th-century-temperance-movement-198974

     Hedeen Jane. “The Road to Prohibition,” Indiana Historical Society, 2011, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/1d7d71dfbb39529a736fdba5279a5ba9.pdf

     Willard, Frances E. And Mary A. Livermore, Editors. A Woman of the Century: Biographical Sketches of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, Buffalo, N.Y.: C.W. Moulton, 1893.

     

Newspapers:

     “Some New Paintings,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 6 July 1884, p. 8. 

     “Artlets,” The Indiana Herald (Huntington, Indiana), 6 April 1887, p.6.

     “Eminent Women. The Part They Are Taking in the World’s Affairs,” The Huntington Democrat (Huntington, Indiana), 17 Jan 1895, p. 9.

     “After Saloonist. Wife Who Asked Him To Refuse Her Husband Drinks Acts,” Fort Wayne Daily News, 1 July 1907, p. 2. 

     “An Appreciation,” The Fort Wayne News, 20 April 1917, p. 12.

     “Historic Articles Are To Be Donated To Local Red Cross,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 22 Aug 1918, p. 8. 

     

     Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024