Lura Ella Beam (1887 - 1978)

Born 1 Apr 1887 in Marshfield, Washington, Maine, United States

Ancestors

Died May 1978 at age 91 in Bronxville, Westchester, New York, United States

Biography

Lura Beam is Notable.

Lura Beam was a Mainer.

Lura Beam -- teacher, researcher, and writer -- was born in Marshfield, Maine, near Machias in Washington County, and graduated from the local high school in 1904. Her first two years of college were spent at the University of California, Berkeley. She then transferred to Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1908. For the next three years she taught in southern black schools that were directed by the American Missionary Association. Beam then became an administrator for the Association. She earned an M.A. from Columbia in 1917.

Her entire career of teaching, research, administration and writing was spent in the non-profit area. Other organizations where Beam was employed include the Interchurch World Movement (PDF), the Committee on Maternal Health/Maternity Research Council, the Association of American Colleges, and the American Association of University Women.

When Beam worked for the Committee on Maternal Health/Maternity Research Council in the 1920s, she met Louise Stevens Bryant, a social welfare/public health specialist who lived in Bronxville, NY. The two women remained committed friends and companions until Bryant's death in 1957. Often the two women spent their summer vacations in Marshfield.

Bryant, fascinated by small town life, encouraged Beam to write the book for which she is best known in Maine: A Maine Hamlet. First published in 1957 to little notice, the book was republished in the mid-1980s and a new edition was published in 2000 in connection with the book The Mirror of Maine: One Hundred Books that Reveal the History of the State and The Life of its People. A lengthy review appeared in the Magic City Morning Star (Millinocket, ME) in 2004.

Other books by Lura Beam:

• A Thousand Marriages; a Medical Study of Sex Adjustment' (1931/1970; with Robert Latou Dickinson)
  
• The Single Woman: a Medical Study in Sex Education' (1934/1987; with Robert Latou Dickinson)
  
• Bequest From a Life; a Biography of Louise Stevens Bryant' (1963)
  
• He Called Them by the Lightning; a Teacher's Odyssey in the Negro South', 1908-1919 (1967), a monograph
  

Unknown writer, found word for word found on three sites below.

Sources

• Waterboro Library
  
• http://www.maine.gov/msl/maine/writdisplay.shtml?id=94749
  
• http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/collection/data/755741217

Footnotes

According to multiple sources, Lura was inseparable from Louise Stevens Bryant. ( Louise Bryant ) Lura's book, A Maine Hamlet ©1957, was dedicated to her memory.

• An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society; University of Chicago Press; ISBN-10: 0226793664; ISBN-13: 9780226793665; Rakuten.com Sku: 30508700; Publish Date: 8/13/2012
  

• Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America; ISBN-10: 0226530442; ISBN-13: 9780226530444; BINDING: Paperback; UNIV OF CHICAGO PR

• Bequest from a Life: A Biography of Louise Stevens Bryant; Lura Beam; Waverly Press, 1963

Acknowledgments

Thanks to K. Layman for adding information, photos and sources.