Dates

• Usage: 1859 - 1939

Biographical Note

Marion Francis Eaton, daughter of Lewis S. and Jane Fay Eaton, was born in Elgin (Kane County), Illinois, on November 5, 1859. The 1880 census shows Marian Eaton living in the Elgin home of her parents. She married Charles H. Woodruff (1855-1911) in Kane County on January 19, 1887, and the couple would have three daughters: Wilda (1887-1932), Rosella Marion (1890-1914), and Helen M. Woodruff (1899-1980). By 1900, according to the census for that year, Charles Woodruff was owner of a local iron foundry. Marion Woodruff continued to live in Elgin following the death of her husband but by 1930 had moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she lived with her daughter Helen, employed by Princeton University as a professor of archaeology.

Helen M. Woodruff, youngest daughter of Charles and Marion Woodruff, was born in Elgin, Illinois, September 25, 1899. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1922, she earned her master's and doctoral degrees at Radcliffe College, completing her dissertation in 1928. Entries in the diary of Marion Woodruff suggest that Helen Woodruff was briefly married to Daniel Crane Taylor (1897-1986), a professor of Shakespeare, in the 1920s. She received the Archaeological Institute of America's Fellowship in Medieval and Renaissance Archaeology in the 1920s, providing her the opportunity to travel and study in Europe for a year. After serving as curator at the Sears Museum in Elgin, she taught at Wellesley for a year. By 1930, Woodruff was employed by Princeton University as an archaeologist; in 1933, she became director of Princeton's Index of Christian Art. In 1942, Woodruff took leave from Princeton and joined the U. S. Navy's WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. That same year, she published the Index of Christian Art. She was discharged from the WAVES in 1945. Helen M. Woodruff died in New York March 27, 1980.

Wilda Woodruff, eldest daughter of Charles and Marion Woodruff, was born in Elgin, Illinois, November 29, 1887. She married Don Compton, vice president of the Grigsby-Grunow Company. The couple lived in Chicago and had three sons: Richard, Gail, and Charles. Wilda Woodruff Compton died in Chicago, March 22, 1932.

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