Title: Gwyneth King Roe Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1880-1968

Creator:

• Roe, Gwyneth King, 1868-1968

Call Number: Mss 151

Quantity: 3.5 c.f. (9 archives boxes and 1 volume)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Papers of Gwyneth Roe, wife of Gilbert Roe, a New York attorney and former law partner of Robert M. La Follette; teacher of the Delsarte system of physical education with Emily Mulkin Bishop; advocate of women's dress reform, suffrage, and the Woman's Peace Party; and friend of several members of the La Follette family and of numerous political progressives, radicals, anarchists, and muckrakers. Included is incoming correspondence, teaching material, notes and drafts of her writings and lectures, household and office expense books, family diaries, notes and memorabilia pertaining to her husband, and drafts of her autobiography, including descriptions of life in Chamberlain, S.D., around 1880 and of the Yankton Indian School.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00151

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Mrs. Gwyneth King Roe was the wife of Gilbert E. Roe, New York attorney, former law partner, and long-time friend of Robert M. La Follette. She was born in New Providence, Iowa, daughter of John H. King and Permelia Andrews King, March 30, 1868. Her father, a member of the Iowa Legislature, left Iowa to found the town of Chamberlain, South Dakota in 1880. In 1883 she went as a student to Highland Ball outside Chicago, where she became interested in the Delsarte method of physical education, as taught by Emily Mulkin, later Emily Bishop. Mrs. Roe was later to form a life-long teaching partnership with Mrs. Bishop. “Our theory was based on the principal of relaxation and release from nervous tension, not as an end in itself but as a means of finding the basic centers of feeling and being.”

In 1887 the King family moved to Rapid City, South Dakota. Mr. King spent increasing amounts of time in Washington, D.C., working on land cases, many of them for Dakota Indians. Gwyneth (Netha) King went to Yankton College for two years, spent her summers at Chautauqua, New York, working with Emily Mulkin, and was invited to teach for two years at the University of South Dakota in 1889-1890.

During the 1890s Miss King taught in Washington, D.C. schools, at Western and Eastern high schools, in the YWCA, at a Catholic Girl's School and at Miss Somers School, now Mt. Vernon Seminary. She pioneered in urging freedom of dress for women, advocating a simple one-piece shift in place of the elaborate, corseted attire of the time.

In 1895 she traveled to Madison, Wisconsin in place of Mrs. Bishop, to teach a class of women organized by Mrs. Robert La Follette. There she met Gilbert Roe, who later became her husband, and began her long association with the La Follette family. She married Gilbert Roe in 1899 and moved to New York where he entered law practice and she set up a studio for “Health and Efficiency” at 114 West 72nd Street. She continued to teach for the next ten years.

Gilbert Roe maintained his close relationship with Robert La Follette, and helped to bring some of the reform legislation of Wisconsin to New York. He drafted New York State's first Workman's Compensation act and the N.Y. Primary Act. In 1911 he wrote “Our Judicial Oligarchy” in which he charged that judges placed property rights above human rights. He was chairman of the first Men's League for Woman's Suffrage and he and Mrs. Roe marched in the first suffrage parade held in New York City in 1911. He filed an amicus curiae on behalf of Eugene Debs, socialist labor leader, and was counsel to five Socialist New York assemblymen who were deprived of their seats for their anti-World War I attitudes. In 1917 he defended Senator La Follette and won exoneration for him from disloyalty charges in the Senate. He laid the groundwork for the Teapot Dome investigation in 1922-23, when as counsel to the Senate Committee of Manufacture he investigated the oil industry. In 1924 he was Eastern campaign manager for La Follette, a Progressive party candidate for the Presidency.

Anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were house guests of the Roes at Pelham Manor, and Emma Goldman once fled police by staying at the Roe home. Lincoln Steffens was a close family friend, and Mrs. Roe remembers sharing a box with John Reed the night before he sailed for Russia, where he wrote Ten Days that Shook the World, about the Russian Revolution.

Mr. Roe died in 1929. In 1934 Mrs. Roe went to live with her daughter, Janet who was director of a nursery school for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Norris, Tennessee. They moved to Washington, D.C. in 1943.

The Roes had three children: Jack, who died in 1956, Janet (Mrs. Jerome Keller), and Gwyneth (Mrs. Edwin W. Murphy). Mrs. Roe's sister, Mrs. Arthur B. Fairbank, is the mother of John King Fairbank, director of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard.

Mrs. Roe's papers consist primarily of letters she received, notes and drafts of her writings and lectures, as well as family diaries, household and office expense books, and writings, notes, and memorabilia of Gilbert Roe. The collection is divided into four categories: correspondence, writings, teaching career, and family records and biographical materials.

The correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, and separated into two categories, general and family. The general correspondence includes a large number of letters from members of the LaFollette family, especially Fola, copies of letters to the Roes from the La Follette collection in the Library of Congress, and excerpts of letters Mrs. Roe received on Robert M. La Follette, Jr.'s death. In addition there are letters from many progressives and radicals, such as Mary Beard, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Marie and Frederic Howe, Cora (Mrs. Freemont) Older, and Lincoln Steffens. There are a few letters from China in the 1930s by Agnes Smedley and Mrs. Roe's nephew, John King Fairbank. Mrs. Roe also corresponded with Helen (Mrs. David) Lilienthal, whom she knew in Norris, Tennessee. Copies of letters from Gilbert and Mrs. Roe to people outside the family are arranged under “Roe” with general correspondence, including a fragment of a letter from Mrs. Roe to “My dear friend” in which she writes of Upton Sinclair. The bulk of the family correspondence consists of letters between Gilbert and Mrs. Roe before their marriage, when he was Robert La Follette's law partner. Much of the family correspondence is undated, but when possible it is arranged chronologically, as well as by correspondent. The letters Mrs. Roe received on her husband's death are included with the family letters as well as correspondence concerning the disposition of Mr. Roe's papers.

A major portion of Mrs. Roe's writings consists of unsorted notes and drafts of an autobiography she worked on for twenty years. She describes her early life in Iowa, the frontier town of Chamberlain, South Dakota, the Dakota Indians, a meeting with Sitting Bull, Chicago in the 1880s, Washington, D.C., and her teaching experiences there in the 1890s, McKinley's inaugural ball, and meeting Clara Barton. The autobiography is rich in anecdotal material about the La Follette family, as well as progressive and radical circles in New York in the early 1900s. Also included in Mrs. Roe's writings are notes for speeches in support of women's suffrage and the Women's Peace Party, critiques of the public schools, notes on education, a description of the Yankton Indian school, drafts of an article “On Being Eighty,” as well as unsorted drafts and notes for miscellaneous articles and speeches.

The material from Mrs. Roe's teaching career consists of class lists, lesson plans, printed course descriptions, as well as unsorted lecture notes and drafts of articles on the Delsarte method of physical education.

Family records and biographical materials include miscellaneous writings and notes by Gilbert Roe; an inventory of his papers; his office account book, 1927-Jan. 1930; personal, household, and office expense books, 1900-1904; descriptions and leases of the places the family lived; a diary of Mrs. Roe, 1884; and several diaries of their son, Jack Roe, 1918-1921. Mrs. Roe's autograph book from the 1880s and '90s contains Clara Barton's signature. A diary of clippings kept by Mrs. Roe's father, John King, highlights some of the concerns of people in South Dakota in the 1880s and 1890s.

Acquisition Information

Placed on deposit by Mrs. Edwin W. Murphy, Bethesda, Maryland, 1969, 1970, 1971. Accession Number: M69-197; M70-150; M71-28

Processing Information

Processed by J. Cooper, February 26, 1971.

	Series: Correspondence
	General
Box   1 Folder   1	A-B
Box   1 Folder   2	Mary R. and William Beard
Box   1 Folder   3	C-E
Box   1 Folder   4	F-G
Box   1 Folder   5	Emma Goldman
Box   1 Folder   6	H-K
Box   1 Folder   7	L
Box   1 Folder   8	Belle La Follette (most copied from La Follette Collection, Library of Congress)
Box   1 Folder   9-10	Fola La Follette
Box   1 Folder   11	Isabel and Philip La Follette
Box   1 Folder   12	Excerpts from letters received on Robert La Follette, Jr.'s death
Box   1 Folder   13	George Middleton
Box   1 Folder   14	M-O
Box   1 Folder   15	P-R
Box   1 Folder   16	Roe
Box   2 Folder   1	S
Box   2 Folder   2	Lincoln Steffens
Box   2 Folder   3	Mary La Follette Sucher and Ralph Sucher
Box   2 Folder   4	T-Z
Box   2 Folder   5	Teachers Union
	Family
	Gwyneth King to Gilbert E. Roe
Box   2 Folder   6	1896-1898
Box   2 Folder   7	Jan. - May 1899
Box   2 Folder   8	June - Aug. 1899
Box   2 Folder   9	, Sept. - Nov. 1899 (European trip)
Box   2 Folder   10	Gwyneth King Roe
	Gilbert E. Roe to Gwyneth King (Roe)
Box   2 Folder   11	1898
Box   2 Folder   12	1899 and undated 1898-1899
Box   2 Folder   13	1898-1899, undated
Box   3 Folder   1	Sept. - Nov. 1899
Box   3 Folder   2	1900-1923
Box   3 Folder   3	Gwyneth Roe Murphy to Gilbert and Gwyneth Roe
Box   3 Folder   4	John E. Roe to Gwyneth K. Roe
Box   3 Folder   5-9	Letters received on Gilbert Roe's death
Box   3 Folder   10	Correspondence concerning disposition of Gilbert Roe's papers
	Series: Writings	⇧
	Autobiography
Box   4 Folder   1	Chronology, Misc. notes
Box   4 Folder   2	Misc. notes
Box   4 Folder   3	Madison and the La Follettes, 1895 and 1896
Box   4 Folder   4	Typed chapters, Prelude and Ch. I-V
Box   4 Folder   5	Ch. I and Misc.
Box   4 Folder   6	Ch. IV,
Box   4 Folder   7
Box   4 Folder   8	Highland Hall, , Yankton College,
Box   4 Folder   9	, Rapid City, Dakota, and Chautauqua, New York
Box   4 Folder   10	Washington, D.C.,
Box   4 Folder   11-15	Unsorted
Box   5 Folder   1-13	Unsorted
Box   6 Folder   1	Anti-war (Women's Peace Party)
Box   6 Folder   2	Women's Suffrage
Box   6 Folder   3	Yankton Indian School
Box   6 Folder   4	Education, public schools, “The Closing of a Progressive Nursery School, Project of the W.P.A.”
Box   6 Folder   5	“So Now You're Eighty”
Box   6 Folder   6	Amato case and African Experience of a friend
Box   6 Folder   7	Memorial for Marie Jenney Howe
Box   6 Folder   7	Miscellaneous notes, drafts, and newspaper articles
	Series: Teaching Career	⇧
Box   6 Folder   8	Letters of recommendation, catalogues and printed course descriptions
Box   6 Folder   9	Class lists, lesson plans, Emily Bishop's will
Box   7 Folder   1	Printed material on Delsarte method
Box   7 Folder   2-4	Unsorted notes and writings on Delsarte method
	Series: Family Records and Biographical Materials	⇧
Box   7 Folder   5	Inventory of Gilbert E. Roe papers, Library of Congress
Box   7 Folder   6	Gilbert E. Roe, certificates and diplomas
Box   7 Folder   7	Gilbert E. Roe, miscellaneous notes and writings, record of telephone calls, 1907-1915
Box   7 Folder   8	Gilbert E. Roe's obituaries
Box   8 Folder   1	Family personal expense records, and expense record of 1899 European trip
Box   8 Folder   2	Office and household expense books, 1900-1902, 1904
Box   8 Folder   3	Leases, inventories, descriptions of places Roe family lived
Box   8 Folder   4	“Roe Family News” by Jack Roe
Box   8 Folder   5	Diaries, Gwyneth King, 1884, children when babies, John E. Roe, , 1918, 1920, 1921, and family travel log, , 1926
Box   8 Folder   6	Notes on Roe and King family history
Box   8 Folder   7	John King's collection of newspaper clippings, 1880-1906
Box   9 Folder   1	Gwyneth King's autograph book, 1880-1900, Horoscope by Holmes Merton, , 1899
Box   9 Folder   2	Misc. memorabilia and clippings about Mrs. Roe
Box   9 Folder   3	100th birthday and obituaries
Volume   1	Gilbert E. Roe, Office account book, 1927-Jan, 1930