BATES, Mrs. Clara Doty

Clara Doty Bates was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 22, 1838.  A writer from an early age, Clara attended private schools.  She married Morgan Bates, a newspaperman, in 1876 and the couple moved to Chicago, Illinois.

A well-known writer of juvenile literature, Clara published several books under the imprint of Boston's D. Lothrop & Company.  From its beginnings in 1875, she was a frequent contributor to Wide Awake, a children's periodical that was published by that firm. Her sister, Charlotte Doty Finley, was the illustrator for Clara's poem "Silver Locks and the Bears" in the December 1875 volume. Clara's poems also appeared in Babyland,Harper's Young People, St. Nicholas, and Youth's Companion, and Farm, Field, and Firesode.

In addiiton to publishing her own work and contributing to periodicals, Clara contributed "LIT-TLE TO-TOTE" to an edited volume, Baby World: Stories, Rhymes, and Pictures for Little Folks. (Century, 1884).

While living in Chicago, Clara was vice-president of the Fortnightly women's literary club.    She also was very involved with the Woman's Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary. During the early 1890s, Clara was a contributor to A Woman of the Century.  She was very involed with the Columbian Exposition and arranged the children's library with Alice L. Williams.  In July of 1893, she spoke at the Educational Congress in Chicago. 

She passed away in Chicago on October 14, 1895, at age fifty-six, and was buried in Ann Arbor's Forest Hills Cemetery. Clara's friend Elia W. Peattie wrote a lengthy obituary  that was published in The Omaha Nebraska-Herald and reprinted in The Hartford Herald (Hartford, KY) on February 12, 1896.  Elia certainly captured Clara's essence in this beautiful tribute.