Detail, Bye Baby Bunting, triptych, double sided poster by ML Spoor.

Mary Louise Spoor (1887-1985) worked for a brief shining moment from Chicago, publishing illustrations for Rand McNally and Lyons & Carnihan. Mollie, as she was called, went to The Art Institute and shared a studio with Gertrude Spaller, another young illustrator. Together they illustrated two children’s readers. The Easy Road To Reading Primer editions one and two.

In 1917 she published a set of three schoolroom posters of nursery rhymes with Congdon Publishers in Chicago.

By 1917 she was married and pregnant with her first child. She moved to Massachussets to raise her family. And that ended her professional career. She continued painting and drawing private works that would end up in family collections but those works have not yet entered into public circulation.