Margaret Cobb Ailshie papers

Collection

Identifier: MS 0046

Staff Only

Summary

Correspondence and papers of Margaret Cobb Ailshie (1886-1959) and of Fanny Cobb, Lyon Cobb, and Calvin Cobb; also correspondence relating to the Lyon Company, Chicago, Illinois (1895-1929); letters from W.E. Borah; photographs of Boise, of Idaho, and of family members in Chicago; scrapbook related to the Cobb family and to the Haywood trial; partial copy of an intermediate version of Harry Orchard's autobiography (1907); joke edition of the Idaho Statesman (Boise) about Eva Hunt Dockery (1929).

Dates

Creation: 1872 - 1959

Creator

Cobb (Ailshie), Margaret, 1883-1959 (Person)

Biographical Note

Margaret Cobb Ailshie was born in Chicago in 1886, the daughter of Calvin Cobb and Fanny Howes Lyon Cobb. In 1889, Calvin purchased the Idaho Statesman, and the family moved to Boise. When Calvin Cobb purchased the Statesman, it was a small tri-weekly. He turned it into Idaho's largest daily newspaper. Editorially, the paper was pro-business and Republican. Margaret Cobb was educated in Boise, Chicago, and Farmington, Connecticut.

During World War I, she worked for the Red Cross at a soldiers' canteen in France. Her mother died in 1917 and her older brother Lyon Cobb died in 1921. Margaret became publisher of the Statesman after her father's death in 1928, where she continued both her father's editorial policies and his business practices.

She was married to James F. Ailshie Jr. in 1929, and they divorced in 1973. She was actively in charge of the Statesman until her death in 1959.