Ruth Cranston papers

Ruth Cranston, author, lecturer, and biographer of Woodrow Wilson, was born on November 14, 1887, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Earl Cranston, was an American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Due to her father’s ministry and missionary work, Cranston spent much of her childhood abroad. She attended Goucher College (where she became acquainted with Woodrow Wilson’s daughters), earning a B.A. degree in 1908.  By 1915, Cranston had published seven novels under the pseudonym Anne Warwick.  After college she spent many years working and studying in Geneva where she voluntarily participated in conferences, councils and assemblies sponsored by the League of Nations, during which time she organized a Commission on “The Causes of War” under the World Conference on Religion for the League. She also served with the American Red Cross in France during WWI. A self-proclaimed “world citizen” and internationalist, Cranston travelled extensively and pursued wide-ranging research interests including religion and world faiths, international relations, the League of Nations, Asian culture, and history, while publishing articles (both fiction and non-fiction) in Harper’s, Century, Christian Science Monitor, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, and others. Her biographical work “The Story of Woodrow Wilson” was published in 1937, and in 1946 she organized a World Faiths Roundtable at Town Hall Auditorium in New York, subsequently publishing “World Faith: The Story of the Religions of the United Nations” (1946).  She received an award for her work “The Miracle of Lourdes” in 1955. During a lecture tour in the United States, Cranston fell ill quite suddenly and died at a hospital in New York City on April 2, 1956. As of 2011, multiple websites and blog posts referred to Cranston’s work on interfaith cooperation and understanding. A rebroadcast and transcript of a 1950s radio interview with Ruth Cranston appeared at http://thisibelieve.org/essay/16467/ and also on Tufts Digital.