Newton Herbert Alfred was born February 7, 1900 in Attleboro City, Massachusetts. His father, Edmund Pendleton Alfred, was born 1869 in MA. His mother, Minnie Laura Coldwell, was born 1868 in Newtonville, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was named after his mother's hometown, Newtonville. His parents married in 1890 and had three children, of which he was the youngest. His older sisters Ellen Harriet Alfred and Amy Maude Alfred were born in 1892 and 1897. His family lived at 31 Third Street. They attended the Attleboro Parish Pilgrim Church. His father was a foreman at a jewelry factory that employed many townsfolk. In fact, the industry was so prominent at the time that Attleboro was known as "The Jewelry Capital of the World."
In 1918 he served in the military during the Great War. He was a private in Battery C of the 244th Coast Artillery.
His name was published in the January 16, 1919 edition of The Christian Register on an honor roll list of young Attleboro parishioners serving in the Great War.
After the war he return to Massachusetts and studied art. It is not known where he studied, but Attleboro is near Providence, RI, and it is also connected by commuter rail to Boston, MA. Both of these cities have excellent art schools.
During the 1920s he drew line art for newspaper advertising.
In 1925 he married his wife, Frances B. Alfred, who was born in Massachusetts in 1905. She worked as an ecclesiastic secretary.
On August 15, 1928 his mother died at the age of sixty.
That same year he moved to New York City to work as an illustrator in the advertising industry. He and his wife lived at 126 West 104th Street, near Columbus Avenue. He joined the New York National Guard.
In 1934 he drew story illustrations for The National Guardsman Magazine.
In 1939 he drew comic books for Chesler Studio, Dell Publications, Fawcett Comics, Lev Gleason, Marvel Comics, and Street & Smith Comics.
In 1940 he began to draw story illustrations for Street & Smith pulp magazines, such as The Shadow, Clues Detective, and The Whisperer.
He did not serve in the military during WWII, at which time he was in his forties and a veteran of WWI.
In the post war period from 1946 to 1950 he drew story illustrations for pulp magazines Fighting Western, Hollywood Detective, Speed Detective, Speed Mystery, Speed Western, Private Detective, and Super Detective. These were all produced by Trojan Publishing Company under the art direction of Adolphe Barreaux.
He also worked for Trojan Comics under the same art director in 1951.
In 1952 he and his wife moved to Glenwood, New York, a suburban district one stop north of Yonkers on the Metro North commuter train from Grand Central Station.
On November 8, 1953 The New York Times published his letter to the editor, entitled "Anti-Decadence," in which he said, "I want to express my gratitude for the October 25 article, Andrew Wyeth - Conservative Avant-Gardist. I was particularly pleased by the mention of the artist's father, N. C. Wyeth, some of whose works I recall seeing long ago in 1920 during a visit to the children's room of the New York Public Library. Such articles do much to counteract the recent decline and decadence of illustration through over commercialization, social superficialities, etc. It was welcome reading."
According to a biographical profile in The Guardsman Magazine, his hobby was the study of the American Civil War. He was fascinated with this subject since early childhood, when he listened to war stories of his grandfather, George Herbert Alfred (1836-1911), a Civil War veteran, who lost the index finger on his left hand during the second battle of Bull Run.
Newton H. Alfred died in Glenwood, NY, at the age of fifty-five in January of 1956.
© David Saunders 2012 |
