Hope Dunmore / Old Settlers Social Club Collection

Biographical Note

Chicago native Hope Ives Dunmore was a longtime member of the Old Settlers Social Club, an organization founded by prominent members of Chicago's African American community in the early 1900s. She was born circa 1894 in Chicago, Illinois, the eighth of twelve children of Anna Bumbry Dunmore and Robert Dunmore. The Dunmores lived at S. Campbell Avenue on Chicago's South Side, where Hope resided until the end of her life.

Little published biographical information is available about Hope Dunmore. Records in this collection indicate that she was educated in the Chicago Public School system. They also confirm that she graduated from the Shields Elementary School and Wendell Phillips High School. However, her professional life is sparsely documented. According to 1920 census records, Hope worked as a clerk in a chiropodist's office, and calling cards in the collection suggest that she was later employed by the Charles S. Jackson Funeral Home. It appears that a younger cousin, Robert Dunmore, Jr., and his mother, Charlotte Bumbry, lived with Hope's family. Robert Dunmore, Jr. was one of the first African-American graduates of Northwestern University's dramatics program. His involvement in theater as an actor, playwright, and director in Chicago and New York, as well as his work with the Harlem Experimental Theater and the Negro Little Theatre of Evanston received frequent mention in the Chicago Defender. Robert Dunmore, Jr., was also a board member of the Chicago Music Club and taught at the Allied Arts Academy (6407 South Parkway) in the late 1930s.

Hope Dunmore and her family members were active in a host of social, fraternal, and religious organizations in 20th-century Chicago. The majority of the Hope Dunmore / Old Settlers Social Club Collection documents the variety of everyday household concerns and voluntary commitments of a family that considered itself among Chicago's African-American pioneers.

The Dunmores were longtime members of Chicago's Old Settlers Social Club, founded by Ida McIntosh Dempsey in May 1902. A permanent group was organized in 1904. Distinguishing themselves from the growing numbers of Southern blacks migrating to Chicago in the early twentieth century, the Old Settlers Social Club limited membership to African-American men and women who could prove their families had lived in Chicago for at least thirty years. "The object of the club," stated in its 1923 Constitution, was "to keep the Old Settlers in touch with each other in this rapidly growing Metropolis." Linking geographic origins to status in the community, the Old Settlers created important social, cultural, and religious networks on the South Side.

Length of residence in Chicago qualified black Chicagoans for membership in the organization, and, accordingly, the Old Settlers were especially interested in the history of their community. Sharing this interest in black history, Hope Dunmore and her siblings produced a small pamphlet entitled "Dunmore Family's Magazine: Historical Sketches and Stories of Negroes in Chicago Mostly True" (1935). Their "Magazine" included stories, maps, and profiles of black Chicago's notable people and places. Hope and her brother Robert Dunmore also appear to be involved in the formation of the "Chicago Native Club" in 1925. This social club had a similar mission to that of the Old Settlers, but its relationship to the Old Settlers Social Club is unknown. Both groups received mention in the social columns of the Chicago Defender newspaper.

Hope Dunmore and her family also participated in a host of Masonic organizations. Membership overlap between clubs like the Old Settlers Social Club and black freemasonry may have been high in the early twentieth century. Black freemasonry has been documented as early as the American Revolution; however, women's auxiliaries did not emerge until the late nineteenth century. Ida McIntosh Dempsey, founder of the Old Settlers Social Club, was an early member of Chicago's Fidelity Court #22, Heroines of Jericho, Order of the Eastern Star. Hope was a longtime member of the Heroines of Jericho and honored as a Grand Matron; her mother, Anna Dunmore, was a charter member of Fidelity Court #22 and a Grand Matron as well. Distinguished by costume and ritual, these fraternal groups provided another social outlet for many of Chicago's first African-American families.

A lifelong member of Chicago's St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hope also helped to organize church activities, including the parish's Sunday Church School. St. Thomas attracted many of the "old settlers" to its pews when it opened in 1878 as Chicago's first black Protestant Episcopal congregation.

Hope Dunmore died on January 23, 1974. Many of the groups she participated in are still active to this day.