Winifred Sackville Stoner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2006)

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (November 2006)

Winifred Sackville Stoner (ca 1870-1931) was an educator, the founder of three schools of "Natural Education". She was the mother of Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr. (1902-1983), a child prodigy.

Although the year of her birth has not been confirmed, what is known is that Winifred Sackville was married, in Buffalo, New York, on February 3, 1900, to James Buchanan Stoner. Their daughter, Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr., was born in 1902, perhaps in Evansville, Indiana.

The younger Stoner's intelligence was recognized at an early age. She could use a typewriter, by age six, and could speak between six to 13 languages, by age ten. She passed the Stanford University and University of Wisconsin-Madison entrance exams, at age nine. She learned to play the violin and piano, at a young age, and won several chess tournaments, as well.

Mother Stoner believed that learning should be fun and exciting and should appeal to all of the senses. She encouraged the use of toys and typewriters, which she thought "liberating" for young children.

At this time, Mrs. Stoner was publishing books of verse and local histories. She was an advocate of Esperanto, the universal language that had been developed in 1897; in 1910, at the age of eight, the daughter produced a translation of Mother Goose, in Esperanto.

In 1916, the Bobbs-Merrill Company in Indianapolis published the elder Stoner's "Manual of Natural Education".

By the mid-1920s, the Stoners had relocated to New York City, where, according to The New York Times[1], they lived at 418 Central Park West, in a building named "The Braender", after the builder, German-born Philip Braender.

Mother and daughter continued to publish works during the 1920s, including a monthly pamphlet, "Mother Stoner's Bulletin", which discussed the Stoner philosophy of education.

At some point, Mrs. Stoner founded the League for Fostering Geniuses.

In 1927, mother and daughter set out on a trip through America and Western Europe, called a “genius hunt” by The New York Times. She sought to identify other gifted children for further study.

According to The New York Times[2], Mrs. Stoner devised six classes of people. In ascending order of value they were idiots; destructionists; morons; hypermorons (in which class she put most people); geniuses (who were creative); and progressionists (who could get things done in business and related fields).

The last two, she thought, were the only ones "worth preserving," The Times reported.

While her mother was well-known for her attempts at publicity, the younger Stoner was also adept at garnering attention, most famously for a photo of her that appeared in the New York Evening Graphic (sometimes called the "(porno) Graphic"), a daily taboid newspaper, in 1926.

The photograph, according to Time Magazine[3], "showed her lolling in bed, clad in scant, fluffy negligee, with a sad but inviting expression on her face". The daughter had accused Robert H. Loeb, "psychoanalyst, student of Dr. Carl Jung, and member of the New York Stock Exchange" of beating her, after she had confronted him about a bracelet she gave him for repairs, which had somehow (allegedly) ended up on the wrist of another woman. (The charges were later dismissed[4].)

The daughter was apparently displeased with the attention, saying, "It's taking a long time to live down the child-wonder business and how sick I am of hearing that word!" Her mother, in sympathy, said, "Poor girl! It is a terrible thing to be in the public eye as a so-called prodigy. No one who has any sense wants to be appearing in the papers ..."

Winifred Sackville Stoner died on November 23, 1931 at age 49, according to Woodlawn Cemetery (and according to Time Magazine[5]), or at age 58, according to Heritage Quest Online. The cause was chronic nephritis (inflammation of the kidney).

Stoner, Jr. married at least three times. Her first husband, M. Charles Philippi de Bruche, a Count, was thought to have died within years of their marriage, but, according to news reports[6], in 1929, was found alive. She filed for divorce, as he was wanted as a criminal. Her second and third marriages were apparently unhappy, including her marriage to Louis Hyman, which ended in divorce, in 1927, according to Time Magazine[7].

She died in 1983.

Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr. was a prodigious poet. One of her best known poems is entitled, "The History of The U.S.[8]", which some people may be able to recite, verbatim, but which most know only by its first two lines:

"In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue
And found this land, land of the Free, beloved by you, beloved by me."