Yda Hillis Addis
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Yda Hillis Addis | |
---|---|
Born | 1857 Leavenworth, Kansas, U.S. |
Died | after 1902 |
Occupation | Writer |
Spouse | ; no children |
Parents | Alfred Shea Addis |
Other names | Yda Addis Storke |
Yda Hillis Addis (born 1857,[a] disappeared 1902 in California, U.S.) was the first American writer to translate ancient Mexican oral stories and histories into English, some of which she submitted to San Francisco-based newspaper The Argonaut.[1] The most widely popular of her more than 100 stories are Roman's Romance and Roger's Luck.[2]
Early life
Addis was born in 1857 in Leavenworth, Kansas,[2] and moved with her family to Chihuahua, Mexico, at the start of the American Civil War.[1] The daughter of an itinerant photographer, Alfred Shea Addis, she roamed the Western frontier and Mexican wilderness, into indigenous villages, miners' camps, and other locations, mostly in Mexico and California, assisting her father. When she was 15, Addis and her family moved to Los Angeles, where she graduated with the first class of Los Angeles High School, a graduating class of seven students.[1] She also began teaching seven-year-olds.
Career
Fiction-writing
Addis wrote many short stories, drawn from Mexican
Travel writing
When the editors of the various publications to which Addis was connected discovered that she was often going out of the country, they took advantage of the opportunity to employ her as a
Personal life
Pixley introduced Addis to his good friend John G. Downey, a former governor of California, in his late sixties. When Downey's sisters discovered that he and Addis had become engaged, they shanghaied Downey to Ireland, leading Addis to sue for breach of promise.[3] Before the trial date, Addis left San Francisco for Mexico City to write for the bilingual newspaper Two Republics, owned by J. Magtella Clark. When the editor, Theodore Gesterfeld, reportedly became distracted by Addis' wit and charm, the editor's wife, Ursula, sued for divorce and named Addis a co-defendant. In Gesterfeld's testimony, he admitted to committing adultery, but not with Addis.
With this unfavorable publicity, Addis left Mexico for
Addis' history of Santa Barbara, her only book, was published in 1891.
During the divorce Addis discovered that her attorney,
When Addis was released from jail, her divorce from Storke was not final and she requested
While it was long assumed that Addis disappeared in 1901, with some sources claiming she was committed by Storke to an asylum, from which she escaped, research by Ashley C. Short suggests that Addis reinvented herself as Adelayda Hillis Jackson, taking a name from her mother's family and that of her purported second husband Grant Jackson while tacking on "Yda" to her new first name, and spent nearly thirty years in Texas (after perhaps living in San Francisco and México). Mainly residing in San Antonio, Adelayda Hillis Jackson spent the last decade of her life committed in the state hospital in that city and died in 1941.[16][unreliable source?]
See also
Notes
- ISBN 9780804740579.
References
- ^ a b c d e Rasmussen, Cecilia (October 22, 2006). "A 19th century firecracker flames out in her private life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
- ^ a b Mighels, Ella Sterling (1893). The story of the files: a review of California writers and literature. San Francisco: Cooperative Printing Co. pp. 225–226. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
- ^ San Francisco Examiner. July 28, 1887. p. 1.
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(help) - San Francisco Morning Call. September 15, 1890.
- ISBN 0-19-507260-X.
- ^ "Mrs. Storke's Statement". Los Angeles Herald. August 14, 1891. p. 5. Retrieved July 18, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ "25 Years Ago". Morning Press. Vol. 47, no. 122. January 24, 1919.
- ^ "25 Years Ago". Morning Press. Vol. 48, no. 102. December 28, 1919.
- ^ San Jose Mercury News. July 10, 1899 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
- ^ a b "Well Armed for Her Purpose". Alexandria Gazette. July 10, 1899. p. 2. Retrieved July 18, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ a b "Tried To Kill An Attorney". San Francisco Chronicle. July 10, 1899. p. 1. Retrieved July 18, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
- San Francisco Morning Call. February 22, 1900.
- ^ "Yda Addis Storke is free". Santa Cruz Sentinel. May 12, 1900.
- ^ Morning Press. June 18, 1901.
{{cite news}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help) - ISBN 0-87461-059-1.
- ^ "The Second Life of Yda Addis". January 20, 2022.
Further reading
- Treviño, Rene H. (2019). "Absolving La Llorona: Yda H. Addis's "The Wailing Woman"". Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. 36 (1): 123–130.
- Treviño, Rene H. (2020). "Yda H. Addis (ca. 1857–?): An Annotated Bibliography". Resources for American Literary Study. 42 (2): 256–305. .