Grace L. Schauffler Papers

Grace Leavitt Schauffler was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on November 25, 1894, as one of ten children of Dr. Henry A. Schauffler, a clergyman and missionary, and Clara Hobart Schauffler. The Schaufflers founded the Schauffler Missionary Training School in Cleveland, which later became Schauffler College. Schauffler College merged with the Oberlin College Graduate School of Theology at Oberlin in 1954.

Grace Schauffler graduated from Oberlin High School and attended Oberlin College, graduating in 1916. She attended the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) for two diplomas: she was awarded a diploma for “Normal Arts” in 1918, and in 1925 she attained a diploma in Graphic Arts. She was an instructor in design and handicrafts at Teacher’s College, Syracuse University in 1918-19, and Director of the Department of Handicrafts at the Waterbury Institute of Craft and Industry in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1919-21. In 1922-23 she was a teacher of crafts at Milwaukee-Downer College in Wisconsin.

For nine years beginning in 1924 Grace Schauffler lived in New York City and worked as a freelance artist. She returned to Ohio, where she worked as a window display designer in Cleveland for three years. Schauffler is credited as the creator of life-size child mannequins, and patented her bases and shoes for these mannequins in 1937. She returned to Oberlin in the late 1940s and lived with her sister, Margaret Reynolds Schauffler (OC 1918), a member of the faculty in the Oberlin College Art Department from 1923 to her retirement in 1961.

In 1943 Grace Schauffler created the “Schauffler Swinging Circus,” consisting of paper dolls that were to be hung on a string; she marketed and copyrighted these in 1943. She was an avid collector of dolls, and by 1948 had about 600 dolls and miniatures, many of which were displayed in her home. That year she published How to Make Your Own Dolls, for Pleasure and Profit (New York: Hobby Book Mart, 1948).  She wrote and illustrated several other books, including books of children’s poetry. Her other titles include Fields of the Lord; the Story of Schauffler College (1957), Christmas Down the Years (1968), Grace the Meek by Grace Herself (text and illustrations) (1976), and Sally’s Spectacles (1977).

In 1952 she went abroad by herself for over two months, travelling to England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium and France.  She was active in the Ohio Poetry Society and a past president of the Ohio Poetry Association. In 1956 she attended the summer writer’s conference at the University of New Hampshire. She was a reporter for the Oberlin Times, and a columnist for the Oberlin News-Tribune, with a regular column called “Grace’s Grapevine,” for over twelve years.

The Oberlin Improvement and Historical Organization awarded her an honorary lifetime trusteeship for her many years of service to the organization, particularly for the furnishing and care of the “Little Red Schoolhouse,” Oberlin’s first school. She retired as its curator in 1976, a position she held since its restoration in 1958. In 1974 she appeared in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine in a piece on silk culture in Oberlin in the 1830s; her great grandmother Abigail Patchin Blakesley made silk stockings from silk produced by her family in Hudson, Ohio.

Grace Schauffler died on October 14, 1982 at the age of 88.

Sources Consulted

Biographical sketch for Margaret Reynolds Schauffler, Oberlin College Archives (RG 30/204).

Student file for Grace Leavitt Schauffler (RG 28/3).

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.