WAYNESBORO – A certified genealogist presented the second part of a program on the artist W.W. Denslow and his illustrations of 19th century Franklin County properties during last week’s Waynesboro Rotary Club meeting.
Pam Anderson, a certified genealogist with Anderson CoGen, talked about Denslow’s illustrations of Waynesboro properties the week before, and last week moved to a discussion of properties in Quincy and Washington townships.
Through research she said she’d been able to find 12 of the 18 Washington Township properties and three of the four Quincy Township properties produced by Denslow in 1877 for “McCauley’s Illustrated History of Franklin County,” which was published in 1878.
After his time in Franklin County, Denslow went on to illustrate more than 10 books and pamphlets and reached greater fame through his association with “Wizard of Oz” writer L. Frank Baum, after meeting him in Chicago in 1898. He illustrated the original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” edition.
He returned to Franklin County on occasion, including an appearance at Wilson College, but his later years were not as successful. His erratic personality and heavy drinking hastened his decline, and he was relatively unknown when he died of pneumonia in 1915.
