In 1649 (less than three decades after the original Thanksgiving), Henry Norwood fled England to seek safety in Virginia. His cousin, Sir William Berkeley, was royal governor, and Henry was in real trouble.
Sir William Berkeley by Peter Lely

 He’d supported the king against the Roundheads - - and the king had, quite literally, lost his head. All royalists were at risk.

Norwood’s voyage was a disaster - - a nearly unbroken series of horrific near-death encounters - - but he survived to write about the journey in a celebrated narrative, A Voyage to Virginia. 

 (A few years later, Norwood became Treasurer of Virginia, a post he held for 12 years, before continuing his nearly unbelievable adventures - - including another flight, this time with a warlord and his harem in Tangiers!)
Front page of A Voyage to Virginia by Henry Norwood

 270 years after Henry Norwood’s catastrophic voyage to America, Mary Ruth Norwood arrived at Crescent College.

Crescent College, c. 1919

 She had every bit of her ancestor’s incredible courage and adventurous spirit. Her story is just as implausible as Henry’s - - but every word is true.
Ruth Norwood
Preparatory Student, 1917
Hardin-Simmons Academy
Abilene, Texas

 Before she came to Eureka Springs, Ruth (she very rarely used her full name) had been a student at a preparatory academy on the campus of Abilene’s Hardin-Simmons University.


Ruth Norwood
Preparatory Student 1917
Academy at Hardin-Simmons
Abilene, Texas
We don’t know, yet, what brought her to Crescent College, but once here she had a very busy time indeed. Her focus was in Literary Studies, with a second emphasis in French.
Ruth Norwood (second from left) at Crescent College
Senior Vaudeville
from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

 But she was active in the Expression (theatre) Arts.  You can see her here in two photographs from one production, the Senior Vaudeville: she’s second from the left in both, 
Ruth Norwood (second from left) at Crescent College
Senior Vaudeville
from the 1920 Crescent College

 and performed in all of the college’s plays; she was a member of the Athletic Association, 
Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Tennis Club
from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

 a member of the Tennis Club, 
Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Riding Club
from the 1920 yearbook

 the Riding Club, and the Hiking Club!
Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Hiking Club
from the 1920 yearbook

 In 1919, everyone stayed at Crescent for Thanksgiving.


President Thompson held a feast for the entire faculty and all the students. They described the evening:
“This was probably the most enjoyable occasion of the year, for the spirit of Thanksgiving certainly prevailed. Toasts were given by members of the faculty and student body. Then, to add more to the hilarity of the evening, Mr. Thompson entertained us with his clever stories. After the last course was served we passed into the ball room, where dancing began in full sway. And Thanksgiving was enjoyed to the fullest extent, by both the faculty and students.”
(Having a ballroom was an unusual, but often welcome, feature of Crescent College!)

Ruth Norwood in Crescent College's SINS Club
from the 1920 yearbook

 In the 1920 yearbook, there are tantalizing glimpses of other sides to Ruth’s personality - - she (and her roommate, Sam “Sambo” Anita King)

Sam Anita King
from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

were members of the Sins Club (we would love to discover more about this club!), and the pair were also affectionately kidded on the Jokes page:
Ruth Norwood (to her room-mate): “Sambo, I wish you would illuminate some of those shoes from the closet.”
Ruth Norwood
Senior Portrait
Crescent College 1920 yearbook

 The two girls continued friends even after Ruth graduated from Crescent, and Sam visited Ruth in Abilene in 1921, when Ruth was enrolled as a student at Hardin-Simmons College.
Ruth Norwood Junior Portrait
Hardin-Simmons University
1921

 (Crescent was a two-year college, and so after graduation, Ruth was able to begin her studies at H-S as a junior.)
Ruth Norwood
Hardin-Simmons College, 1922

 J.D. Sandefer, president of Hardin-Simmons, offered Ruth the first of her many remarkable jobs, while she was still a student.

“Well,” she recalled years later, in an Abilene Reporter-News interview, “he saw me passing the campus one day and asked if I’d like to be the bursar at San Marcos Academy. I wasn’t sure what a bursar was, but I said yes.

San Marcos Academy, San Marcos, Texas

“He said to catch the train at Buffalo Gap that night; that they needed a good Christian girl down there. I did. It turned out they’d had an administrative shakeup at San Marcos, it was registration time and there was no bursar to take the money.
Buffalo Gap
painting by George Bickerstaff

“I found out pretty quick I wasn’t a bookkeeper. So I secretly hired an accountant at Austin and would go to my sorority hall (Alpha Delta Pi) every weekend, with the books to balance. The accountant cost more than my wages.”
While still in her twenties, Ruth taught at several schools, including St. Hilda’s Hall in Charleston, West Virginia, and the Bon Avon School for Girls in San Antonio. 
Bon Avon School for Girls
San Antonio, Texas

  Her final academic position was as Principal in Ropesville, Texas.
Ropesville, Texas
Train Station built 1918

 But she’d been bitten by the theatre bug while at Crescent, and now a truly exceptional opportunity presented itself.
Fairfield, Iowa
Home of the Stewart Brothers
and their Universal Producing Company

 It all began with three brothers in Fairfield Iowa and their wild, revolutionary idea.

It sounds a bit like an old Judy Garland – Mickey Rooney movie: Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!

But that’s the seed of the idea - - multiplied by millions.
Universal Producing Company
poster for The College Flapper
1933

 The brothers formed the Universal Producing Company, and trained a thousand directors who would then go out to every town, village and hamlet across the nation, armed with scripts, costumes, and a mission: to work with hundreds of locals to put on a play - - and then to split the proceeds from each performance.

(The local share of the proceeds usually went to charity, or to civic improvements, and townsfolk eagerly participated.)

Local Talent in a Universal Producing Company production
in Buffalo Center, Iowa

The endeavor was such a success that Universal Producing Company became “the largest live entertainment production company in the country for a decade starting in the late 1920s.” [Fairfield Entrepreneur Hall of Fame]

By the mid-1930s, the brothers were booking “ten shows a weeknight across the nation, employed 225 coaches and a swarm of salesmen….

Between 1928 and 1934 more than 1,000,000 amateur actors appeared in casts of its productions which played to more than 6,000,000 people.” [The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 by Joseph F. Kett, Stanford University Press.]

Advertisement for Universal Producing Company production
in Columbus, Nebraska, 1928,
of Aunt Lucia with 100 local people as 100 characters
including the [all male!] College Flappers (the Sig-sig-a-rette Society)

And most amazing of all?

Nearly all 1,000 directors and dramatic coaches employed by Universal Producing Company were young women!

Why do we never hear about this phenomenal enterprise?!

Jefferson Hotel
Dallas, Texas

Ruth recalled, “They held a course in play directing for six weeks in the roof garden of the Jefferson Hotel in Dallas. They really made you do a fall if you’d been shot, or do a dance step. Goodness, if it had lasted longer, we worked so hard we’d have all been dead.”

Wilson Stewart, the brother who ran the Universal Boot Camp, was described as “so charged with dynamite, if he jarred himself he’d blow himself to bits….”

In addition to polishing her directing skills, Ruth also learned how to “persuade people to be part of the shows, how to work with civic organizations...”

By the end of  six weeks, “coaches would have all the skills of a teacher, preacher, salesman, dramatic coach, nursemaid and governess, newspaper reporter, make-up artist, dance-hall queen, sideshow barker and banker.” [Fairfield Entrepreneur Hall of Fame] 



After Ruth finished Boot Camp, “they booked me in Downey, Idaho, and I played all over Idaho until the snow got so deep we couldn’t.

“Next year, they transferred me to California. I enjoyed that, five boat trips up and down the coast and all. I’d fly, too, and send the costume trunks overland.” [This was in the very early 1930s, - - flying was still quite an escapade!]

A poster from one of the Universal Producing Company’s shows, The World's All Right, is seen below.

You also see a map with the staggering number of productions around the country - - clearly demonstrating why this phenomenon needs to be recognized!

Universal Production Companies around the nation!

After three years, Ruth decided to strike out on her own. She produced her own show, Casey's Trial, using her knowledge and experience at Universal to help her succeed - - a remarkable feat, during some of the worst years of the Great Depression.

In fact, her opening production was in March, 1933 - - during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous Bank Holiday. 

Clovis News-Journal
[Clovis, New Mexico]
16 September 1933
Page 2

Ruth - - like her dashing ancestor, centuries before - - set out across the world and mounted her first show in Persia (modern-day Iran), “while the oil boom was on there.”

The show was an enormous success, and she then took the production around the United States.

The Shamrock Texan
[Shamrock, Texas]
14 December 1933

 Dozens and dozens of newspaper articles show her progress across the nation, with local citizens posing for promotional photographs with great gusto. There was even one production where the entire cast - - over 100 roles, male and female - - was male!

You see below a photograph from Ada, Minnesota - - where (as in Columbus, Nebraska's production of Aunt Lucia,) the farming men are dressed as flappers!

Flappers' Chorus
Ada Minnesota

 In 1937, she found herself in Tucumcari, New Mexico. She walked into the offices of the Tucumcari Daily News, where George H. Likins was editor.
Tucumcari New Mexico
1939 postcard

 It was her usual habit to try for free publicity, since the town would benefit from her production, but in Tucumcari, Likins refused.

“'We don’t give anything away on this paper,’” Ruth recalled his declaring. “I guess we went in before he’d had his morning coffee.”

Discouraged, she returned to her hotel room.

Later, “I picked up a paper and he’d devoted his whole column to our show. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just go back. His bark is worse than his bite.’”

“We closed that show by getting married on Thanksgiving of 1937.”



Ruth and George shared many years together, and after a period when they sold films for the Alexander Film Company, later owned and ran a large motion picture theatre and a drive-in theatre in Abilene. 

Advertisement for Alexander Film Co., 1925

At one point, zoning and construction delays threatened their operation, and they projected - - well, let Ruth explain, as she did in this wry advertisement:
"Our live families like to eat.
Takes Money.
So we're showing on a sheet,
Big and funny."
George died in 1957, and Ruth closed the downtown theatre the next year. 

In 1965, she was off on a new adventure, however - - traveling to England, to participate in the 750th anniversary signing of the Magna Carta.

Postage stamp from Great Britain
Celebrating the Magna Carta

Another of her ancestors, Robert Fitz-Walter,  


Seal of Lord Robert Fitz Walter, who led the opposition against King John of England

was one of the barons responsible for King John's signing the original.

Ruth Norwood in 1972
at a 50th reunion at Hardin-Simmons

Ruth died in 1979, and is buried with George in Abilene. They had no children, but if you or anyone you know is related to her  - -  or to any of the Crescent College students or faculty  - -  please, do get in touch! We’d love to hear from you!