Halsey Cooley Ives, 1847–1911

Halsey Cooley Ives was born on 27 October 1847 in Montour Falls, Schuyler County, New York, son of Hiram Du Boise Ives and Teresa McDowell. He died on 5 May 1911 after being stricken with apoplexy in London while on a business trip. Halsey was married on 21 February 1887, in St. Louis, to Margaret Daisy Lackland, the daughter of Rufus James Lackland and Mary Susannah Cable, born in October 1857 in St. Louis. Margaret died on 26 August 1927 in Switzerland, while traveling in Europe with her daughter. Both are buried in Schuyler County, New York.

Halsey’s father died when he was only fourteen years old, and his formal education was in his native village at Havana Union School, where he took up the occupation of house painter and “grainer,” a person who painted on a flat surface to imitate fine wood or marble. With these skills, he packed his brushes and headed for St. Louis where he arrived around 1874 and got a job as a teacher in the Polytechnic School of Washington University. He went abroad to study art, and on his return, he became a member of the faculty at Washington University. He and Margaret lived at 3721 Westminster Place in St. Louis City.

Margaret Ives received a sixty-four-acre estate in St. Louis County in 1899 from her father, Rufus J. Lackland. They named their new home “Redcroft,” and it was located near Uceyle Avenue and Lackland Road in Overland. It was part of the farm where her grandfather, Dennis Lackland, had built his home, which still stands, in 1844.

Halsey Ives was chief of the Art Department of the Chicago Exposition in 1893, and in 1904, he was chief of the Art Department of the St. Louis World’s Fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. He was successful in having the art building of the fair built as a permanent structure that would serve as the city’s art museum after the fair. Halsey served on the City Council from 1895–1899, where he promoted public support for the city art museum. In 1910, he was the director of the City Museum of St. Louis and a traveling convention speaker. After Halsey’s death in 1911, Margaret lived at the Chase Hotel in the City of St. Louis.

Children of Halsey Cooley Ives and Margaret Daisy Lackland:

1. 1. Caroline Eliot “Callie” Ives was born on 9 October 1889 and died on 16 May 1973, both events in St. Louis. She never married and is memorialized with her parents in Montour Cemetery, Schuyler County, New York.
   2. Neil McDowell Ives was born on 27 November 1890 in St. Louis and died on 12 September 1946 in Kingston, New York. Neil married Marie C. Doul, who was born in 1881 in Canada.

(Sources: The Book of St. Louisans, St Louis, the Fourth City, The Missourians, Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., “Halsey C. Ives,” The Crooked Lake Review, Fall 1998.)

Written by Patricia A. Andersen
January 2021

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