George Ade - Kentland, IN - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

The grave for George Ade, is in the Ade plot, in Fairlawn Cemetery, just south of Kentland, Indiana. There is a large family memorial, surrounded by smaller markers, for individual family members. The marker for George, is on the south side of the plot.

It simply says:

GEORGE ADE
1866 - 1944

The marker, a stone block, appears to have been moved off of it's base slightly, at some point in time. (see the pictures)

The Ade plot is located just inside the western gated entrance to the cemetery, see the map in the pictures.

The date of this visit was 9/2/2012

Description: From Wikipedia:- Ade was born in Kentland, Indiana, one of seven children raised by John and Adaline (Bush) Ade. While attending Purdue University, he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He also met and started a lifelong friendship with fellow cartoonist and Sigma Chi brother John T. McCutcheon and worked as a reporter for the Lafayette Call. He graduated in 1887. In 1890 Ade joined the Chicago Morning News, which later became the Chicago Record, where McCutcheon was working. He wrote the column, Stories of the Streets and of the Town. In the column, which McCutcheon illustrated, George Ade illustrated Chicago-life. It featured characters like Artie, an office boy; Doc Horne, a gentlemanly liar; and Pink Marsh, a black shoeshine boy. Ade's well-known "fables in slang" also made their first appearance in this popular column. Ade's literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humorist of American character during an important era in American history: the first large wave of migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where, in fact, Ade produced his best fiction. He was a practicing realist during the Age of (William Dean) Howells and a local colorist of Chicago and the Midwest. His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners and, indeed, a comedy of late 19th century American manners. Ade's fiction dealt consistently with the "little man," the common, undistinguished, average American, usually a farmer or lower middle class citizen. (He sometimes skewered women, too, especially women with laughable social pretensions.) Ade followed in the footsteps of his idol Mark Twain by making expert use of the American language. In his unique "Fables in Slang," which purveyed not so much slang as the American colloquial vernacular, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concrete, specific evidence with which he implicitly indicts the object of his satire—always a type (e.g., the social climber). The fable's actual moral is nearly always implicit, though he liked to tack on a mock, often ironic moral (e.g., "Industry and perseverance bring a sure reward"). Ade's house near Brook As a subtle moralist all too aware of the ironies of the modern world, George Ade was perhaps the first modern American humorist. Through the values implicit in the fables, Ade manifested an ambivalence between the traditional rural virtues, in which he was raised (the virtues of Horatio Alger and the McGuffey Readers), and the craftiness he saw all around him in booming Chicago. Ade (left), with John T. McCutcheon, circa 1894-1895 The United States, in Ade's lifetime, underwent a great population shift and transfer from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Many felt the nation suffered the even more agonizing process of shifting values toward philistinism, greed, and dishonesty. Ade's prevalent practice is to record the pragmatic efforts of the little man to get along in such a world. Ade propounds a golden mean, satirizing both hidebound adherence to obsolete standards and too-easy adjustment to new ones. His view is often an ambiguous, ambivalent, pragmatic reaction to the changing scene, but it remains an invaluable literary reflection of the conflicting moral tensions resident in our national culture at the turn of the century. Ade was a playwright as well as an author, penning such stage works as Artie, The Sultan of Sulu (a musical comedy with composer Nathaniel D. Mann and lyricist Alfred George Whathall ), The College Widow, The Fair Co-ed, and "The County Chairman". He wrote the first American play about football. After twelve years in Chicago, he built a home near the town of Brook, Indiana (Newton County). It soon became known for hosting a campaign stop in 1908 by William Howard Taft, a rally for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in Date of birth: 02/09/1866 Date of death: 05/16/1944 Area of notoriety: Literature Marker Type: Other Setting: Outdoor Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link] Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Not listed

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Date Logged Log   09/02/2012 KC9PDY visited it