Ione Marie Quinby Griggs (1891-1991) was a crime journalist for the Chicago Evening Post and subsequently wrote an iconic advice column for the Milwaukee Journal Green Sheet for over fifty years.[1][2]
Born in Kansas to William Paine Quinby and Laura E Quinby (née Peck),[3][4] Griggs and her family moved frequently during her childhood. Her parents met when her father started a law practice in Salina, Kansas. He moved to Salina in 1885 and by 1889 they were wed. Her eldest sibling was born in 1889. Born on April 22, 1891, Ione Qunby was the eldest daughter in a family that eventually included six children. In 1893, her family moved to Western Springs, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago that had been a home-base for her father's family for several decades. Her father opened a law office in the city. Subsequent moves took the family to her father's family plantation in Tennessee, back to her Kansas birthplace, and then to Western Springs once more, when she was around sixteen years old. Her education was spotty, and Griggs made a variety of claims throughout her life about how far she had gotten through school. Moving back to Chicago, however, provided Griggs with a view of other women writing for newspapers, such as Frances Willard and Margaret Sullivan, and she eventually attended the Northwestern University School of Journalism.[5][3]
Writing was Griggs's passion from a young age. She published for the first time at age 10, with encouragement from her parents. Her family tree held a number of members who were involved in newspaper work, including a female relative who published a women's rights paper in Ohio's North-West Territory and a variety of others scattered across the country.[3]