Margaret Colby Getchell Parsons

In 1916, Getchell was hired onto the editorial staff of the Worcester Gazette (now known as the Telegram & Gazette), while freelancing for other newspapers in Worcester and Boston, writing on everything from airplane technology to the wonders of the local park.[4][5]

By the following year, however, she was profiled in Writer: A Monthly Magazine for Literary Workers, after having completed, and sold, a set of plays that could be performed at home as entertainment at holiday parties, with sets and costumes so simple they allowed for improvisation.[4] She had also published three children's books in multiple genres: The Cloud Bird, a fairy tale adventure, featuring a swan, a bear, a fish and other creatures, who appear, willy-nilly, in miniature, on any part of the page in "their" chapter with Dorothy Ann, the heroine.[6][7] Her second book Proposal Number Seven features two comedic acts, and a make-shift diagram showing children how to organize their own sets.[8] The third was more commercial in intent, akin to Getchell's holiday and rainy day plays still to come, only Spruce Cone and Bunchberry, as it says in subtitle, is A Campfire Girls Play, with enough parts for a dozen girls, plus casting tips.[4]

Getchell went on to write several other children's books, and she became the full-time book editor at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. She died in 1970.

Getchell and her sister Ruth came from a sophisticated background. Their father Dr. Albert Colby, was a "prominent specialist in throat and lung diseases, and a pioneering treatment of tuberculosis."[9] Their mother Edith Loring Getchell (née Pierce) was a former student of Thomas Eakins, and a prominent artist with an international career whose work has been collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and other major institutions.[10]

One of only two to earn a B.A. from Wheaton College in 1914, the first year they were offering degrees, Getchell later attended Radcliffe.[10][11][12] In 1921, she married Eugene Olean Parsons, garden editor for the Sunday Telegram and The Evening Gazette.[13] In 1933, they had their only child Carol E. Parsons Rader who died in 2019.[14]

• Spruce, Cone and Bunchberry. A play about an unpleasant family which becomes pleasant when the Camp Fire spirit enters the home. (1916)
• The Cloud Bird (1916)
• Proposal Number Seven: A comedy in two acts (1918)
• Colette of the Red Cross: A play in two scenes for Red Cross juniors. (1919)
• Jack-i'-the-green and the Petentate of Weaterdom (1920) (as Margaret Colby Getchell.)
• Red Letter Day Plays (1921)
• In the Children's Play-house (1923)
• Ten stirring Bible plays (1927)
• Good Turns, or Only a Tenderfoot: A boy scout play in three acts (1928)
• Scoops: A comedy in three acts for female characters (1930)
• Almost Rehearsal-less Plays; Stunts and Novelty Programs (1931)
• The Woman's Club Playbook (1935)
• Off the Old Block: A one act-comedy for all women (1935)
• A modern Thanksgiving, a play in one act (1937)
• One Night Stand: five one-act plays for young people (1942)

• Hathitrust Digital Library
• Library of Congress: For the full text of the Cloud Bird.

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  A 1922 woodcut accompanying a quote in Pennsylvania's Daily Times.
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  A 1917 photo accompanying an interview about children's plays in the Boston Globe.
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  Portrait of Dr. Albert Colby Getchell by Thomas Eakins,1907.
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  Cover of Getchell's 1916 book The Cloud Bird, illustrated by Edith Ballinger Price.
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  An undated etching called "A Windswept Road," by her mother, artist Edith Loring Getchell. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.