Yda Hillis Addis - Early Career

Early Career

Addis was born in 1857 in Leavenworth, Kansas, and moved with her family to Chihuahua, Mexico at the start of the American Civil War. The daughter of an itinerant photographer, Alfred Shea Addis, she roamed the Western frontier and Mexican wilderness, into Indian villages, miners' camps, and other exotic locations, mostly in California and Mexico, assisting her father. When she was 15, she and her family moved to Los Angeles where she graduated with the first class of Los Angeles High School; a graduating class of seven students. She began teaching seven-year-old students, and in 1880 submitted her stories of heroines, such as "Poetic Justice" and "Señorita Santos", to The Argonaut. Publisher Frank M. Pixley introduced her to his good friend and former California governor John G. Downey, in his late sixties. When Downey's sisters discovered that he and Addis had become engaged, they shanghaied him to Ireland leaving Addis to sue for breach of promise.

Before the trial date, Addis left San Francisco for Mexico City to write for the bilingual newspaper Two Republics, owned by J. Magtella Clark. When the editor, Theodore Gesterfeld, became distracted with Addis' wit and charm, the editor's wife, Ursula, sued for divorce and named Addis a co-defendant. In Gesterfeld's testimony, he admitted to committing adultery, but not with Addis.