Women’s History Month: Day 31 & Ruth Ellen Church

On the final day of Women’s History Month for 2017, I am featuring Ruth Ellen Church, the food editor of the Chicago Tribune who wrote under the pen name of Mary Meade for many years. She was the food editor from 1936 to 1974. She was also known as the country’s first wine editor.

She graduated from Iowa State University in 1933 with a degree in food and nutrition journalism. The photo above is from the Special Collections at that University. I plan to find out what information they have about her college years.

She published many cookbooks during her career -I have tracked down several.

Sadly, she was murdered in 1991 at the age of 81. Here is the New York Times article about her death.

Church is featured throughout my book, The Food Section. I also wrote a biographical sketch about Church for a midwest history journal.

I presented a paper about her role in wine journalism history last fall and hope to send it to a journal soon.

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