Lura E. Wells was born in 1869, the daughter of Nelson A. Wells (1847-1935) and Fidelio C. Wells (1846-1929). She must have demonstrated early artistic talent because at the age of about 28, she traveled to New York City to attend the New York School of Applied Design for Women, founded to "educate women of natural taste and ability" for whom practical training at a low cost would provide a means of employment. Clearly, her promise proved out. She excelled at the school. In 1897 her work was entered in an annual competition, one of whose judges was the well-known artist Charles Dana Gibson, known for his creation of "the Gibson girl." She won second prize in Illustration
The school Lura chose to attend was both artistically and educationally innovative. Begun in 1892, it was inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and specifically dedicated to the education of women. Its mission was to prepare its graduates for remunerative professional employment in the arts that founder Ellen Dunlap Hopkins believed would be fuelled by the increasing demand for original designs for carpets, oil cloths, wall papers, silks, book covers and other articles of practical interior decoration.
In 1909 the school moved from its original 7th Avenue and 23rd Street location to a newly built building at Lexington and 30th Street. It later merged with the Pratt Institute. The structure (see attached photograph), a "raw, rangy design using Greek forms," was the work of one of the school's original architecture instructors who later became famous for his skyscraping designs. By 2008 it would be valued at $24 million.
While in New York, Lura Wells, along with a School of Applied Design classmate, operated an art store that quite likely sold the kind of work they had been trained to create. Not much else is known about this phase of her life.
Eventually Lura Wells returned home to North Wayne, where her brother Clyde, talented in farming, farmed what is now the Steep Hill Farm, slaughtering pigs and smoking meat and raising vegetables and other plants. He also was a very good cabinet maker, specializing in desks and cabinets. Lura and Clyde's grandniece is Brenda Joseph, who with her husband George Joseph lives on the same farm now, which is situated off Lovejoy Pond Road near the Wayne-Fayette town border.
Another brother of Lura's, Archie Wells, according to the attached map of North Wayne, lived up the hill on the Kent's Hill Road from where Els Crosby, who was a bachelor, lived. While the exact point in the past at which the Wells and the Crosby families had become related is not known, there was a definite family relationship. Ken Wells, Lura Wells' nephew, referred to Els Crosby as "Uncle." It would not have been unusual, and according to neighbor Andy Knight it did so happen, if Lura Wells eventually moved to the home of E.L. Crosby to keep house for him, which she did, living there after his death, although boarding with neighbors through the coldest months as she grow older. She continued her artistic endeavors. She painted the portrait of Els' brother Charles M. Crosby (1859-1935), Master of the Asylum Lodge #133 of the Masons, a copy of which is on display in the Schoolhouse.
Although the date at which Lura Wells and E.L. Crosby painted the schoolhouse stage curtain is not known for certain, it must have been somewhere in the first few decades of the 20th century. An oil painting on linen designed for the practical purpose a stage curtain performed but which was also decorative and original was exactly the kind of undertaking for which Lura Wells would have been prepared when she returned from New York to North Wayne.
Lura was quite well liked in North Wayne. She became blind in her later years but would walk without a cane down the hill to the Post Office across from the North Wayne Church, feeling her way with her feet as she passed along the stones. She would freeze when a car went by. Everybody looked out for her.
E. L. "Ellsworth" or "Els" Crosby was born in 1861, third child of Charles Crosby (1815-1909) and Betsy R. (Thompson), 1817-1905. Besides being thought to have been the postmaster in Fayette, he is remembered as "quite an individual" who built the camps at Tall Timbers and did carving and other art work. For example, he did the drawing of the "North Wayne Me. shops" before the fire of 1881 which is the only record in existence of how that manufacturing complex was laid out.
Els lived in a house next to Andy Knight, had a shop, and did carvings and clocks. He was equally well-liked in North Wayne, being remembered as always having been good to kids, keeping a woodstove going in his shop during the winter and having candy on hand to offer them.
The 1918 Annual Report of Wayne record a payment to Els Crosby in the amount of $50.00 that year, one year later than the expansion of the stage and construction of an exit door was voted on by the town. Clearly, then, Els Crosby made himself useful in civic matters, but whether this payment was for execution of the stage curtain is not known.
The Ben Hur theme that Lura Wells and Els Crosby executed for the North Wayne School stage curtain itself has an interesting history. Novelist Lew Wallace (1827-1905), Civil War veteran who went on to distinguish himself in government and diplomacy, published Ben Hur, A Tale of the Christ in 1880. It became the bestselling book of the 19th century and quickly inspired a silent movie and a Broadway play. It was a telling of "the tale of Christ seen through the eyes of a young Jewish noble, Judah Ben-Hur. complete with plots of friendship, betrayal, revenge, love lost, love regained, redemption, and of course a chariot race." In the stage version, Jesus was depicted as a beam of white light and the eight chariot-pulling horses ran on a treadmill.
Excerpts from Ben Hur were frequently reprinted in school readers. Perhaps students in the North Wayne School recognized the hero they saw upon entering the second floor room as the very same one they'd learned about down in the classroom below.
Els Crosby died in 1946. Lura Wells died in 1959. They are both buried in the North Wayne cemetery.
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