Adele Dawson

Herbalist and Artist

Adele Dawson, as pictured in one of her books

I couldn’t decide who to feature this week, so went to the top of my list of “Lost Ladies” who are waiting their turn and picked the first one on the list. Adele Dawson. Per my notes, I first encountered her in another book, The Invisible Garden by Dorothy Sucher, which I found at the local Half-Price Books.

Per usual, we’ll start with a brief biography.

Her Biography

I found a brief obituary in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press from January 1992:

“Adele G. Dawson, 86, died at 10 a.m. Thursday, January 23, 1992, of natural causes. She was born in Louisiana and was a long time resident of Marshfield. She leaves six children and many grandchildren and great-greatchildren. She was a well-known artist, sculptor, author, lecturer, herbalist, and teacher. She touched the lives of many people all over the country and will be sorely missed. A memorial service will be announced at a future date.”

Using that information, I searched Ancestry to find out she was born Adele Arethusa Godchaux on October 25, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana, though some records list her place of birth as New York. She was married three times. Sterling Dawson was her third husband and it is his last name that she used as an author. I followed another link and found her on the Find-a-Grave website where someone posted another article about her with more information about where she went to school. This article turned out to be her biography published on the back flap of another book she wrote: James Franklin Gilman: Nineteenth Century Painter, which was published in 1975.

“Adele Godchaux Dawson lives in the “Gilman” area of northern Vermont. Born in New York, she grew up in the bayou country of southern Louisiana, graduated from the Newcomb Art School of Tulane University, and then studied with Bertram Hartman and Yasui Kuniyoshi. Later she did graduate work in anthropology and teaching techniques at Connecticut State College, Danbury, social work at Tulane University, and studied the technique of doing wood cuts under Antonio Frasconi at the New School of Social Research.

Mrs. Dawson has been exhibited widely in New England, New York, Greece, Finland, Mexico, and the West Indies, and is represented in both private and public collections. She is a craftsman in wood and a member of Craft Professionals of Vermont.

Her published articles include such diverse subjects as Greek Revival houses, art criticism, West Indian gardens, and personalities of the entertainment world. She has a large herb garden and between visits with numerous grandchildren is writing a book on the use of herbs as preventative medicine.”

There’s also a few more interesting bits of info about her on the backflap of her first book:

“Adele Dawson, teacher and lecturer, is currently presenting workshops on Holistic Health at Goddard College. She also teaches courses on her herbs and Holistic Health at the Community College of Vermont and presents workshop on The Herb Garden for the continuing education program at the University of Vermont. She lectures at garden clubs throughout the state. She was introduced to the lore of herbs by her grandmother and has since studied them in China, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and Scotland. She is also a woodsculptor and painter, and lives in Marshfield. Vermont.”

Her Art

I decided to take a brief side trip to find out about her art, and I’m glad I did because that little search led me to a documentary about Adele filmed by Vermont PBS in 1985. Watch it yourself to find out more about Adele, her gardens and herbs, with a little bit of her wood carving near the end.

One statement from the video near the beginning that struck me was about how gardens don’t begin with a packet of seeds but, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, “gardens start with meditation, with getting to know yourself.”

Her Books:

Adele wrote three books, but we are mostly interested in her two herb books: Health, Happiness, and the Pursuit of Herbs, published in 1980 (available online) and Herbs: Partners in Life: Healing, Gardening, and Cooking with Wild Plants, first published in 1991 (available online). (The other book, noted above, was James Franklin Gilman: Nineteenth Century Painter, published in 1975.)

As one reviewer wrote in The Oregonian 1980:

“Adele G. Dawson contends, in Health, Happiness and the Pursuit of Herbs, that identifying herbs and knowing how to use them is a skill that might have been lost in our rush toward modern miracles but for a wise few who kept the lore alive. Describing 80 common herbs, Ms. Dawson discusses their benefits, how to identify them, how to use them medicinally, cosmetically, on the the table or in wines and teas. She defines the vocabulary of herbalism and includes sections on sources for herbs.”

I don’t own either book but if I found them for sale, I would be tempted to buy them. The first book, Health, Happiness, and the Pursuit of Herbs, is only available as a used book and is not cheap for a paperback. You can find her second book, Herbs: Partners in Life: Healing, Gardening, and Cooking with Wild Plants as a new book on Amazon and Bookshop.

Tea with Adele

We can easily imagine tea with Adele, and where she would have it because they show one of her herbal tea ceremonies in the PBS documentary. I think she’d answer any question we asked of her. Favorite herb? What salve would you use for ___? How did you learn about the various herbs? What plant from your garden do you most like to share?

Who’s Next

I’m intrigued by Adele and her herbs and hope you are too after reading a bit about her. She’s the 75th Lost Lady of Garden Writing that I’ve profiled on this Substack.

If you want to easily find out if I’ve written about someone or have her on a list to write about at some point, check out the index I maintain. I love getting suggestions from readers of other lost ladies to add!

I haven’t picked the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing, but perhaps it will be Dorothy Sucher whose book The Invisible Garden led me to Adele? Or it might be someone I discover in the next week.

Whoever it is, I’ll be back on August 19th with a new post. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.