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© 2003 Smith College. All rights reserved.
"Mother Bloor [Ella Reeve Bloor] speaking
at a picnic in Akron, Ohio, 1942"
Ella Reeve Bloor, popularly known as "Mother Bloor," was noted for her energetic organizing work on behalf of labor, communism, socialism, and radical causes from the 1910s to the 1930s. "Mother Bloor" was born in 1862 on Staten Island, New York. She married Lucien Ware in 1881 and gave birth to six children between 1882 and 1892. In 1895, Bloor published Three Little Lovers of Nature. The following year, she divorced Ware and in 1897, she married Louis Cohen. In the brief span of her second marriage, Bloor had two sons and published Talk about Authors and Their Works for young adults. Bloor was an activist in the suffrage movement during the 1880s and 1890s. In 1901, she joined the Socialist Party and approximately a year later she divorced Cohen. Partnered with Richard Bloor in 1906 to investigate Chicago's meat packing industry, Bloor took her colleague's name despite the fact that they were never married. Throughout the 1910s-30s, Bloor was an advocate for political prisoners and conscientious objectors as well as an organizer of mining, textile, and farming strikes. She ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the socialist ticket in 1918 and participated in the formation of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. in 1919. Two years later, she served as a union delegate to the Second International. Upon her return from the Soviet Union, Bloor hitchhiked throughout the United States while writing articles for the Daily Worker. In 1930, she married Andrew Omholt, her third husband. Seven years later, Bloor returned to the Soviet Union for the twentieth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution. When Bloor returned to the United States she retired to April Farm, Pennsylvania in 1937. Three years later, she published her autobiography, We Are Many. In her early eighties, Bloor undertook a campaign against fascism between 1942 and 1945. In 1951, Bloor died at the age of 89.
For more information, please refer to the biographical essay by Thomas and Richard Edwards in
The Ella Reeve Bloor Papers consist of 5.5 linear feet of personal and professional correspondence, pamphlets, clippings, memorabilia, and printed ephemera. The documents span the years 1896 to 1979 and are particularly strong from the late 1910s through the early 1940s. This collection documents most major events of her life except those of her very early career and the investigation of the Chicago meat-packing industry for Upton Sinclair.
There is material throughout the collection related to both her family and many notable colleagues such as Earl Browder, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Bross Lloyd, William Foster, Lem Harris, Bill Haywood, Paul Robeson and many others.
This collection is organized into six series:
The collection is open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection without any additional restrictions.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to unpublished works of Ella Reeve Bloor. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Ella Reeve Bloor Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
The previous owner of the collection prepared a microfilm edition of biographical clippings and correspondence that replicates approximately two-thirds of the collection. It is available through interlibrary loan and is accessible through an index of events and proper names.
The bulk of the Ella Reeve Bloor Papers were purchased by the Sophia Smith Collection in 1981 from Thomas and Richard Edwards, who had purchased them from the Carl Reeve family. Additional items not included in the original purchase were donated by the Edwards brothers or by Ann Reeve.
Processed by Jack Slowriver, 2001.
Cassette of Richard Edward's speech at Women and Work Conference (3/8/84), College Archives.
Published writings by Bloor in the
This series is comprised of material relating to Ella Reeve Bloor and some of her family members. It includes invitations, published programs, brochures, writings about Bloor, the scrapbook from her 80th birthday tour in 1842, letters of condolence, and tributes from 1936 to 1962. Of the clippings, those from the 1930s are especially interesting because they document her midwestern organizing activities and her arrest in 1935. Other significant items include a short diary entry, handbills, advertisements, the warrant for her arrest in 1920, itineraries from the 1920s to 1942, and her FBI file.
The biographical material regarding various family members includes Andrew Omholt's obituaries, Carl Reeve's birth certificate, and a written report by his daughter, Carla. There is also printed material about Bloor's son, Hamilton Disbrow Ware, her daughter, Helen Ware, and Helen's daughter, Herta Geer. There are two folders of material related to Harold Ware with some reports and articles from his files.
This series is organized in two sections, Family and Friends and associates.
Both sections contain outgoing correspondence from Bloor and incoming correspondence from family, friends and associates, and between family members. The letters to her family were written during her extensive travels. In these letters she describes the people she encountered and the events in which she was involved. For example, there are detailed accounts of early organizing efforts on behalf of Michigan miners in 1928 and farmers in the Dakotas from 1930 to 1933. Also of interest are her letters describing her campaigns against the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 and against fascism during the second World War. Other interesting accounts concern her trips to Russia in 1921-22 and 1937, her 1925 hitchhiking tour for the Daily Worker, and her arrest in Omaha in 1935. The activities of Carl Reeve and Harold Ware, also devoted communists, are documented in their letters.
While Bloor's correspondence between with her friends and associates is not particularly voluminous with any single individual, a wide variety of noted radicals are represented. Her correspondents include Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Earl Browder, William Bross Lloyd, William Foster, Lem Harris, Bill Haywood, Woody Guthrie, Scott Nearing, Kate Richards O'Hare, Anna Louise Strong, Norman Thomas, Anita Whitney, Emmet "Pat" Cush, and others.
This series contains a small number of manuscript notes and speeches as well as a photocopy of Bloor's Talk about Authors and Their Works (1899). Of particular interest are the handbills and advertisements for Bloor's speaking engagements between 1916 and 1942.
This series is largely comprised of correspondence and printed material from a number of organizations directly related to or affiliated in some way with the labor, communist, and socialist movements in the United States. With the exception to the material pertaining to the Communist Party, the bulk of this material represents Bloor's involvement in organizations between 1918 and 1921.
This series contains printed material, newspaper clippings, and correspondence Bloor collected on subjects such as the Soviet Union and the philosophy and practice of conscientious objection to war.
Correspondence authored by such distinguished figures as Albert Einstein can also be found in SERIES IV. ORGANIZATIONS.
[see also Friends and associates - Outgoing, Harris, Lem and Kay]
[see also SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE - Friends and associates - Lochner, Louis]
[see also SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE - Friends and associates - Baines, Saunders, Sejsworth, Traubel]
[see also Oversize materials]
The photographs in this series are arranged in three sections, Ella Reeve Bloor, Family, and Friends and associates.
Especially noteworthy are the photographs of Bloor speaking to crowds and in association with other radical leaders such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Paul Robeson.