Steer-Wilson Family Papers

James Wilson Steer (1895-1989) and Marjorie Binkerd Wells (1899-1992), both Oberlin graduates in the class of 1923, were married in 1924.  James Steer grew up in a Quaker community in Winona, an unincorporated area in East central Ohio, in Columbiana County.  He became a conscientious objector during his service in World War I.  After discharge, Steer chose to donate a year of his time to humanitarian service in the French reconstruction effort organized by the American Friends Service Committee.

After earning the A.B. in Chemistry at Oberlin, Steer administered and taught in schools in Birmingham, North Jackson, and Youngstown, Ohio.  During the depression, he moved his family to Sunnyslope Farm in North Lima where he created Steer Dairy.  He received a master’s degree in Education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936.  He was an active member of his community in North Lima, where he served on the Board of Education, was instrumental in the establishment of the Beaver Township Park, and acted as bank director.

Marjorie Steer, born in New Canaan, Connecticut to Horace Joshua Wells and Agnes Binkerd Wells, grew up on a potato farm on Long Island, New York.  She attended high school in Northfield, Massachusetts.  She was a cousin to Frederick Binkerd Artz (1894-1983), a distinguished history professor and author at Oberlin College, whose mother was Lydia May Binkerd.  Marjorie and James Steer had two children: Alice Margery Steer (Wilson) (1926-2001) and James Wilson Steer, Jr. (1929- ).

After James Wilson Steer retired from teaching in 1960, the couple moved to Atwood Lake in Carroll County, Ohio, and began careers as peace activists and world travellers.  Marjorie Wells Steer, a writer, community leader and peace activist, edited a newsletter serving rural communities in northeastern Ohio for fourteen years.  In 1956, the Public Affairs Press published her treatise on the value of rural community living entitled “New Frontiers of Rural America.”  Her column, “Peace and the People,” appeared from 1965 to 1988 in the Salem, Ohio, Farm and Dairy, for which she was honored by the Smith College Women’s History Archive for her contribution to journalism in 1989.  Other writings were published in Soviet Women, the Churchman, the Journal of Education, American Heritage and other periodicals.

During a ten-year period, Marjorie and James Steer hosted more than a hundred young students from abroad in their rural home.  The couple moved to a Quaker retirement community in Sandy Spring, Maryland in 1979.  Marjorie compiled letters of correspondence between the Steers and their student guests in a book titled Dear Grandparents, published by Dorrance and Company in 1988.  That year James Steer passed away; Marjorie died in 1992.  A book of Marjorie’s poems, The View in Winter, A Book of Poems, with watercolors by her daughter Alice Steer Wilson, was published by Southbound Press posthumously in 1992.

Alice Margery Steer Wilson (1926-2001, daughter of Marjorie and James Steer, graduated with a degree in psychology from Oberlin College in 1948.  She married H. Frederick Wilson (Oberlin College class of 1944) in 1949 and moved to Moorestown, New Jersey.  The couple had four children: Janice Rebecca Wilson (Stridick) (1951), Deborah Mary Wilson (Eastwood Ravacon) (1953), James Frederick Wilson (1954), and Kate Wilson McConaghay (1956).  Two of her children attended Oberlin College: Janice in 1969-70, and James, who graduated in 1977.

Alice Wilson began a serious study of painting in 1967.  She received training in the visual arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, with additional training at Black Mountain College, the University of Rochester, the Haddonfield Arts League and the Philadelphia Museum School.  She taught watercolor and portraiture workshops at Gwynedd Mercy College in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, and the Cape May County Art League at Cape May, New Jersey.  She was also an advocate of historic preservation in Cape May.  The architecture of the area figures prominently in her paintings.

Alice Wilson was president of the Cape May County Art League, the oldest art league in the United States.  During her tenure as president, she attracted young, fresh talent to the League, and therefore began to revitalize the southern New Jersey art community.  As an exhibitor in individual and group shows along the Eastern Seaboard, Wilson was the recipient of numerous awards including the Garth Howland Award, the Violet Oakley Prize and the Samuel Sutter Prize, among many other recognitions.  Her paintings are included in corporate and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.

Alice Steer Wilson died of breast cancer on July 22, 2001.

Sources Consulted

Student files for James Wilson Steer, Marjorie Binkerd Wells Steer, Alice Margery Steer Wilson, and Frederick Binkerd Artz, Alumni Records (RG 28/2).

Frederick B. Artz Papers (RG 30/175).

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich