During her years as a newspaper writer and editor, she began to collect antique quilts. Ruth grew up with a knowledge of quilts through her family connections. She met her future husband, Emmet Finley, also a reporter, while she was doing her investigative writing. During this time, she also wrote poems, fiction serials, and short stories for the paper. In 1910, her career began to blossom when she assumed the pen name of “Ann Addams” and went undercover to report on the harsh working conditions of women in factories and households. She then moved to Cleveland for a job as feature writer for the Cleveland Press. By the time she left the newspaper in 1910, she had become the editor of its women’s page. She rose through the ranks as society editor, music critic, and special interviewer, earning her first byline when she secured a rare interview with Mrs. Her journalistic career begin in August 1907, when she accepted a job as cub reporter with the Akron Beacon-Journal. Instead of finishing her formal education, she spent a year touring the western United States, writing stories and poems as she traveled. In 1902, Ruth enrolled for one semester at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and then transferred to Buchtel College (later the University of Akron), where she completed only two terms. Lovina May Knight, a family friend of the Ebrights, described Ruth as a young woman who possessed an attractive combination of good health, strength, and femininity, with a perceptive wit and a sense of fun. Ruth used her background advantages as an embarkation point for her own intellectual pursuits and creative undertakings. Julia’s family, with seventeenth-century roots in Connecticut, had two state governors in its lineage. Her mother, Julia Bissell Ebright, was a graduate of Oberlin College, the first American college to grant degrees to women. Ebright, a physician who served at various times as surgeon general of Ohio, a state representative, and Akron’s postmaster. Ruth was born September 25, 1884, into the socially prominent and well-educated Ebright family of Akron, Ohio. Its folksy narrative style gives it a personal appeal. To the present day, this work is a popular resource for authors and quilt researchers, due largely to its detailed descriptions and pattern diagrams, along with nearly one hundred photographs of quilts and fabrics. Ruth Finley secured her reputation as a recognized authority in the quilt world with the 1929 publication of her book Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them.
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