Florence Newcomb & L. Arthur Larson: The Perfect Match

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > OLLIE B. SMITH m Robert Kingsbury Newcomb > FLORENCE SMITH m Lewis Arthur Larson

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You can read about Ollie's family here.

Florence, 1935

Florence Faye Newcomb was born 24 Apr 1909 in Lake County, South Dakota. There was always something that shined about Florence. From an early age she was interested in performing and winning. She attended Easter State Normal School and was a charter member of the Theta Chapter of Pi Kappa Delta, which got its charter at the school in 1930. Florence thrived and excelled in forensics, especially extemporaneous speaking. She also participated heavily in theatre arts, performing in student plays throughout her time on campus. She was also May Queen in her senior year.

In 1930, the school got its first shot at attending the national Pi Kappa Delta convention and tournament. Florence took top prize in women's extemporaneous speaking. This is the same year that L. Arthur Larson of Augustana College took second place in the men's competition. Reportedly, they had met previously while in high school and he lost to her in a debate on the "independence for the Philippines."

L. Arthur Larson

L Arthur Larson was born 04 Jul 1910 in Pennington, South Dakota to municipal court Judge Lewis Larson and Annie Bertia Huseboe. He excelled in school and graduated from Augustana as valedictorian. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and in 1931, left for London and Oxford to study. He secured four degrees while there, including one in civil jurisprudence.

In the meantime, young Florence had secured her first teaching post at Freeman High School in Huron, teaching English and Speech at a salary of $1,350 per year. In her second year of teaching, her drama students participated in a dramatic contest conducted by the University of South Dakota and took first place performing, "The Variant," a play about the last hours of a condemned man.

After traveling to London, where she graduated with special credit from the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Arts, she returned to South Dakota. In 1934, she continued to seek the limelight and won  the local challenge in a nationwide  radio contest sponsored by Columbia to find its next radio star to co-star with actor Dick Powell in a new radio program called, "Hollywood Hotel." She did get an expense-paid trip to New York, but did not win the national competition.

In July 1935, she would marry L. Arthur Larson. He got a job at the famous firm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who specialized in insurance law, Quarles, Spence & Quarles in 1935, but found himself laid off in 1939. He then went to University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville. It was there he and Florence had their two children, a boy and a girl.

President Dwight D Eishenhower

From there, he went to Washington DC during the war years where he served at the Office of Price Administration and as the Chief, Scandinavian Branch of the Foreign Economic Administration.In 1945, he was appointed assistant law professor at Cornell School of Law in Ithaca, New York. It was during his time there, he became a respected expert on worker's compensation law. He authored a 11-volume treatise on the subject in 1952, just before being heading to London as a Fulbright Fellow at the School of Economics. He was appointed as Dean of the Pittsburgh School of Law in Pennsylvania in 1953. During that time I found one reference to Florence's continuing involvement in theatre, when she was in a play there that made the news.

Always a registered Republican, he was of a centrist viewpoint, which appealed to President Dwight D. Eishenhower, who had read Larson's book, "A Republican Looks at His Party," and agreed with the tenets he espoused. Eisenhower had him come aboard as an Undersecretary of Labor in 1954. He then went on to serve briefly as the head of the US Office of Information Agency, and then as Eisenhower's chief speechwriter. He then spent a year in 1958 as Knapp Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin School of Law.

Rule of Law Research Center, 1960

Larson moved on to Duke University as the a law professor and later as director of the Rule of Law Research Center at Duke, a position he held for many years until his retirement in 1980. In 1975, he was named the James B. Duke Professor of Law. He also continued to dip into politics and foreign policy and consulted with President Lyndon Johnson, the US State Department, and the United Nations. He was cited as a champion for peace.  He wrote several more books, including in 1968, "Eisenhower: The President Nobody Knew."

In the Duke Law School Review: A Tribute to L. Arthur Larson, one of those providing tribute indicated that Florence had developed a reputation as a sculptor.

He remained the country's leading expert on worker's comp law and his books were the standard reference in the field. And, he was considered a leading expert in foreign affairs, disarmament, and arms control. In 1960, he won the World Peace Award of the American Freedom Association.

After he retired, he continued to write. The couple were married for 55 years when Florence died 02 Mar 1991 and Arthur died 27 Mar 1993, both in Durham, North Carolina.

The Other Newcombs of South Dakota

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > OLLIE BEATRICE SMITH m Robert Kingsbury Newcomb

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You can read a little bit about John Smith, who went to California after living in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, here. The Newcombs in this story shouldn't be mixed up with the Newcombs that married into the Munson family elsewhere in this blog. If there is a connection, it goes way, way, back and I'm not dealing with it!

Olive Beatrice "Ollie" Smith was born 26 Mar 1876 in Nebraska. Several of her siblings settled in South Dakota and did not go on to California with their parents. Ollie met and married Robert Kingsbury Newcomb and married him on 06 Nov 1897 in South Dakota. The couple settled in Ramona, Lake County, South Dakota. Robert had several jobs during their marriage, but in about 1915, he started to experiment with breeding and incubation of chicks. He studied and perfected his methods and in 1929, opened the Sunshine State Hatcheries first state-of-the-art location in Madison.

Before long, he had several locations throughout the state, which were operated by his four sons: Bob, Chuck, Parker, and Lyle.  I don't know what became of the hatcheries, but a news item from 1962 indicated that Lyle's son, Lyle Ralph, had declared bankruptcy and was no longer in the hatchery business. Farming operations and technology kept improving and with the loss of three of the sons by the mid-1950s, my guess is that the effort slowly fizzled out. I'd be interested to know what the end of the story was.

Madison location of the Sunshine State Hatcheries

Ollie died 07 Sep 1949 in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. Robert died 14 Dec 1955.

Ollie and Robert had eight children:

1. Mable born 28 Oct 1898 and died 03 Jan 1899 in South Dakota.

2. Robert "Bob" Kingsbury Newcomb Jr. was born 30 Oct 1899 in Lake County. He died on 08 Apr 1952. Terrible floods swept through parts of South Dakota that week. Bob was trying to keep flood waters out of the basement of his Lake Kampeska home when he succumbed to a heart attack. He was listed as the first victim of the floods that year. During the war, he was regional director of the Civil Aeronautics Association for seven states. He operated the hatcheries at Flandreau, Sioux Falls, Arlington, Salem, Bryant and Huron at various points. He was also the founder and operator of the South Dakota Turkey Breeder's Association. He left his wife and two sons.

3. Lyle Smith Newcomb was born 27 Nov 1901 in Ramona, Lake County. He operated the hatcheries

Lyle Smith Newcomb

in Huron and Madison and died after a lingering illness 23 Sep 1950 in Madison. He left four children and his wife Vera.

4. Parker William Newcomb was born on 27 May 1903 in Lake County. He married Myrtle Dahl, who had a child from a previous marriage. They had four children together. He died 17 Aug 1957 in Lake County. During World War II, he served as a Lt Colonel in the US Army and served a full career in the South Dakota National Guard. He is also listed as having worked in the hatcheries.

5. Emma Mary Newcomb was born 21 Nov 1905 in Hamlin, South Dakota according to her birth index record. She married Fred John Kaske, who served in World War II. They moved to Ventura, California. Emma died 29 Nov 2001. They had two children.

6. Charles B. "Chuck" Newcomb was born on 13 Sep 1907 in Hamlin. He married Camilla Euphame Steensland on 08 Jun 1934 on her parents' farm. They lived in Arlington until 1939 when they moved the family to Sioux Falls to work in the hatchery business. The couple had six children. Chuck died in April of 1986, but Camilla lived to be 100 years old and died in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 05 Aug 2013.

Camilla Steensland

7. Florence Faye Newcomb was born 24 Apr 1909 in Lake County. She and her husband Lewis Arthur "Arthur" Larson had two children. She died 02 Mar 1991 in Durham, North Carolina. Arthur died  27 Mar 1993 in Durham. I'll be writing separately about them.

8. Doris R Newcomb was born 08 Oct 1916 in Lake County. She married Gordon Norbraten on 07 Sep 1938 in Hutchinson, South Dakota. They had one daughter. Gordon died 07 Aug 1975 in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Doris died 16 Aug 1995 in Lee County, Florida.