"WIDELY KNOWN LECTURER DIES

Fred High Succumbs After Extended Illness At Waynesburg Home

Frederick Perry High, 74, well known lecturer, writer and publisher, died Saturday morning March 8, 1941, at his home in West High Street after an illness of six months.

A son of Daniel E. and Margaret Kalbaugh High, he was born November 29, 1866, at Westernport, Md. In his early teens he left school to work in the B. & O. railroad shops at Piedmont, W. Va., and after learning the machinist trade he went to Hazelwood, Pittsburgh, to work in the B. & O. shops, where his uncle, I. N. Kalbaugh, was master mechanic. He attended night school in Pittsburgh and finally entered the Byron W. King night and was graduated in oratory a few years later. Just about five years ago that school conferred upon him the degree of Master of Oratory. Dr. King prevailed upon him to enter Waynesburg College and in September, 1890, he enrolled at the college here. He worked his way through school, but after two years he left to earn enough money to finish his education, returning later and graduating in 1896. 

In the early nineties he began giving entertainments and quickly gained a reputation as an entertainer and lecturer. In 1900, Mr. High and M. P. Schooley, of Homestead, started the Library Lyceum Bureau, which furnished lectures, concerts and entertainment for schools for a nominal sum.

In 1903 he married Miss Nora Summersgill, a teacher in the Waynesburg High School and a well known mezzo soprano singer. Her songs were added to his entertainment program and they traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada giving entertainments at chautauquas, teachers' institutes and lecture courses.

In 1906, Mr. High became managing editor of the Waynesburg Times, a small daily newspaper that had been started a few years previous by the late Dr. J. W. McKay. About this time he also edited and published a souvenir book of Waynesburg called “Waynesburg Prosperous and Beautiful,” and by means of which the late Senator D. S. Walton, then in the State Legislature, was able to secure an appropriation for the building of a girls dormitory for Waynesburg College, now known as Walton Hall. 

In 1908 he went to Chicago where he formed a partnership with Edwin L. Barker and J. Josephy to start a lyceum and chautauqua magazine known as “The Spectator.” Later Mr. High bought out the interests of his two partners and changed the name of the magazine, which was devoted to the entertainment field to the “The Platform,” which he published for a number of years and later sold to Alfred I. Flude. Mr. High then accepted the position of editor of the lyceum and chautauqua pages of “The Billboard,” the well known amusement magazine, with which he was connected until after the first World War. After leaving “The Billboard” he organized the Fred High News Syndicate of Chicago. Mr. High was a member of the Chicago Kiwanis Club for many years and known as the “Father of Children’s Day at the Circus.” He was presented with a beautiful engraved watch by the Chicago Kiwanis at a meeting in the Palace Theatre, the largest vaudeville theatre in the world, for having made it possible for 25,000 crippled children to see circuses.

In later life Mr. High devoted his time to lecturing and writing and was in demand as an after dinner speaker. In 1929 he suffered a stroke of paralysis while on a train enroute from Cincinnati, O. to Huntington, W. Va., to fill a speaking engagement, and after several weeks in a Huntington hospital he returned to his home in Waynesburg to recuperate. His health permanently impaired, he gave up his office in Chicago and spent his remaining days in Waynesburg with his family, occupying himself with writing and helping to compile an authentic history of Greene County which is soon to be published.

Besides his wife he leaves two daughters, Margaret Virginia, wife of Arleigh J. Pettit of Nineveh, and Edna Louise, wife of Thomas W. Crittenden, of Mansfield, Pa., and one son, Fred A. L. High, a senior in Waynesburg College.  One son, John Dewitt, died in infancy. There are five grandchildren, Barbara Lee, Joan and Jackie Pettit, and Richard and Marjorie Crittenden. Also surviving are a sister, Ida V. Kalbaugh, of Cumberland, Md.; one half-sister, Mrs. [microfilm is blurred here and hard to read - may say Etta] Sellers, of Cumberland, Md., and a half-brother, Dr. D. Lee High, of Los Angeles, Calif."