Ada Mae Doris Stanley was born on January 29, 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Garnett Wolseley Stanley, was born in 1882 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Her mother, Agnes Mary Wallace, was born in 1888 in Massachusetts. Her parents were married in Boston on April 20, 1905. She was their only child. The family lived at 32 Sudan Street. The father was an auditor at the American Express Company of Boston.
On April 2, 1914, when Doris was seven years old, her mother, Agnes Marie (Wallace) Stanley, died of Tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six. After this tragic loss the father sent Doris to a Catholic girls boarding school, the Academy of the Assumption, in Wellesley Hills, MA, while he became a traveling salesman for the American Seedless Raisin Company of Boston.
On February 22, 1919 Garnett Wolseley Stanley married his second wife, Alma Marie Snyder. She was born in 1898 in Virginia.
In June of 1920 Doris Stanley, age thirteen, completed the eighth grade at the Catholic boarding school, after which she left schooling and moved in with her paternal grandparents, James Lawrence Stanley (b.1855) and Ada Mae Doris Kinraide Stanley (b.1861). They lived at 735 Tremont Street in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Her paternal grandfather was a printer with a Boston newspaper, where Doris found work was as a typist. While working at the print shop she became interested in a career as a commercial artist and began to take art weekend lessons at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
On February 22, 1923 her paternal grandfather, James Lawrence Stanley, died at the age of sixty-eight. After this loss, Doris left her widowed paternal grandmother, Ada Mae Doris Kinraide Stanley, and moved in with her widowed maternal grandmother, Mary Clancy Wallace DeCrow, who was born in 1868 in MA, and lived in East Orange, New Jersey.
In 1925 Doris Stanley lived at 333 Seventh Avenue in New York City, where she listed her employer as Macfadden Publications. The company was run by Bernarr Macfadden (1868-1955), who produced True Confessions, True Detective, Physical Culture, Dance Magazine, and Ghost Stories. An associate editor at Macfadden Publications at that time was Harold Hersey (1893-1956).
In 1928 Doris Stanley contributed illustrations to Ghost Stories from Macfadden Publications. Other artists who worked for the same publisher at that time were Dalton Stevens, Carl Pfeufer (1910-1980), Wilson Stuart Leech (1902-1982), and Delos Palmer.
In 1929 Harold Hersey started Good Story Publishing Company with financial support from Bernarr Macfadden and distributors, Warren Angel and Paul Sampliner, who co-owned Eastern Distributing. Advertising was handled by their affiliate, Henry Dwight Cushing. One of Harold Hersey's first periodicals was the pulp magazine Ghost Stories. This magazine continued the numbering sequence of the same title from when it had been a Macfadden publication.
The 1930 Census listed Doris Stanley, age twenty three, at 149 Harrison Street in East Orange, NJ, where she lived with her twice-widowed maternal grandmother, Mary Clancy Wallace DeCrow, age sixty-two.
On March 8, 1932 her paternal grandmother, Ada Mae Doris Kinraide Stanley, died at the age of seventy-one.
On February 13, 1933 her father, Garnett Wolseley Stanley, died at the age of fifty-nine in Boston.
In 1934 Doris Stanley married Theodore Buchanan Welsh of East Orange, NJ. He was born on December 23, 1904 in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. The husband was age twenty-nine and the wife was age twenty-seven. They lived at 214 Glenwood Avenue in East Orange, NJ. He worked as a salesman at the Gulf Oil Corporation at 17 Battery Park Place in Lower Manhattan.
In 1945 the husband and wife left East Orange, NJ, and moved to Pittsburgh, PA, where they lived at 7136 McPherson Street. They had two sons, Theodore Buchanan Welsh (b.1945), and David Stanley Welsh (b.1947). The artist's maternal grandmother, Mary Clancy Wallace DeCrow, also left New Jersey and moved to Pittsburgh to live with the family.
On May 19, 1959 the artist's maternal grandmother died at the age of ninety-one in Pittsburgh.
On May 11, 1962 the artist's husband, Theodore Buchanan Welsh, died at the age of fifty-eight in Pittsburgh.
In 1963 Doris Stanley Welsh married her second husband, Theodore John Bechtold. He was born in 1900 in Pittsburgh. He was a truck driver and was also a widower.
Doris Stanley Welsh Bechtold died in Pittsburgh at the age of fifty-eight on October 12, 1965.
© David Saunders 2020 |
