Papers of Chloe Owings, 1878-1970

Social worker, government official, college professor and dean, public speaker and broadcaster, Chloe Owings was born on July 5, 1883, in Colusa, Illinois, one of three children of Rowena Bell (Riggins) Owings (1862-1886) and Samuel Beal Owings (1855-1932). After the death of her mother, her father remarried and the family headed west in a covered wagon to settle in Kansas, where Chloe Owings took on the bulk of the household work while caring for her invalid step-mother. She also founded a Sunday School and ran a small restaurant and hotel while her father traveled as an itinerant carpenter. After her step-mother's death around 1903, and with the encouragement of a group of women from her church, Owings went on to attend Knox Academy (1904-1906), Knox College (1906-1910), St. Louis School of Social Economy, and Washington University (M.A. 1911), where her thesis was entitled Social Conditions of Tuberculous Children. She served as visitor and district secretary of the New York Charity Organization Society (1911-1912) and general secretary of Associated Charities in Poughkeepsie, New York (1912-1916), before leaving for France where she served in various capacities for the American Relief Clearing House in Paris, in French military hospitals, and for the American Red Cross. Her service there earned her the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise. Owings continued to work in France after the war, at the American Hospital of Paris (1920-1922) where she was director of information and raised money to a build a new hospital; as European representative in Paris to the National Information Bureau of New York City (1919-1922); and as a staff member at the Ecole Pratique de Service Social (1917-1921) where she initiated and taught the first course in social case work ever offered in France. While at the Service Social pour les Enfants en Danger Moral, she helped to establish a juvenile court, serving as a model for such courts in the rest of France and other European countries. For this work she was honored with the Legion d'Honneur and the Medaille Penetentiaire which stated that "her work has changed the treatment of children in all correctional institutions in France." Owings also earned highest honors for her doctoral work at the Sorbonne in 1923; her thesis, the first at any French university on a social service topic, was on the treatment of young delinquents in France.

While in France, Owings was appointed legal guardian of a young child, Marguerite (1918-2007). It is likely that Owings was her biological mother. Returning to the United States, she worked for the American Social Hygiene Association (1923-1927), publishing during this time a book, Women Police: A Study of the Development and Status of the Women Police Movement , and for the New York School of Social Work (1926-1927) where she taught and developed and supervised field work for students. From 1927 to 1932 she was professor and director of the Social Hygiene Bureau at the University of Minnesota, conducting research in parental sex education, developing training courses for teachers of parents, and giving public lectures at schools, churches, and civic associations. Following some travel and study in Europe (February 1932 to October 1933) where she looked at the Franco-German relationship and the issue of rearmament, she served as assistant director of the Women's Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration where she was responsible for putting into operation work projects for women. She served as dean and student-faculty consul at Keuka College in Keuka Park, New York (1937-1941), and ran a farm in North Carolina from 1941-1942. In 1943, she founded the Pasadena Institute for Radio (later the California Institute of Radio and Television), and, in 1953, helped establish the School of Social Work at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. After her retirement, Owings remained active in California, as a registrar of voters, and with the Campfire Girls. In September 1958, she began an autobiographical account of her life, called Living Through Covered Wagon to Space Ship Age. Her daughter Marguerite (Mio) married Vincent Polifroni in 1942, lived in California, and had three children: Adele, Kathy, and Francis. She worked as a social worker and as a teacher with a special interest in early childhood education; the family was active in the Orange Grove Friends' Meeting in Pasadena. Owings' letters to her daughter attest to her interest in spirituality and the development of the soul. She died in 1967 in California.