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Eleanor Kirk

From Kook Science

Eleanor Kirk
Born Eleanor Maria Easterbrook
7 October 1831(1831-10-07)
Warren, Bristol Co., Rhode Island
Died 24 June 1908 (76)
Weekapaug, Washington Co., Rhode Island

Eleanor "Nellie" Maria Ames (October 7, 1831 - June 24, 1908), popularly known by her pen name Eleanor Kirk, was an American journalist, writer, and publisher, a noted suffragist, who was interested in astrology, New Thought, and esotericism generally.

Selected Bibliography

Eleanor Kirk's Idea (1892-1905)

Ames was the editor-publisher of Eleanor Kirk's Idea, a monthly New Thought-type magazine. According to the advertising copy, it was "published for the sake of making people healthy and happy," and promised to introduce "the reader to himself, making him acquainted with his own God, resident in his breast, and equal to the work of overcoming all things" (per the Biblical statement that "the kingdom of heaven is within you").

Press Coverage

Obituaries (1908)

  • "'ELEANOR KIRK' DEAD AT RHODE ISLAND HOME. Mrs. Ellen M. Ames Who Was Long a Literary Figure Here in Brooklyn. A PIONEER IN 'NEW THOUGHT' - Journalist, Authoress, and for 13 Years Publisher of Magazine from Greene Avenue Home.", The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, NY): 2, 25 Jun. 1908, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-eleanor-kirk/140518565/ 
  • "THE LATE ELEANOR KIRK. A Tribute to Her Life and Doctrine by One Who Knew Her.", Corvallis Gazette (Corvallis, OR): 4, 11 Aug. 1908, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn93051660/1908-08-11/ed-1/seq-4/ 

    A notable Illustration of her, own bright, optimistic philosophy was the late Eleanor Kirk. She advocated steadily the power of an immortal soul to rule its own body and environment. What she wrote and taught may be known from the titles of some of her books ‐ "Prevention and Cure of Old Age." "Perpetual Youth." "Where You Are." "The Bottom Plank of Mental Healing." She held that the Creator desires his children to be and to have all that is good, therefore gave them divine power to lift themselves above the dark, troubled waters of disease, poverty and unpleasant surroundings. The temptation to give down to disease, bodily discomfort and old age is as much to be resisted as yielding to the moral temptation to steal and lie. This inspiring doctrine was what Eleanor Kirk preached and practiced. She did not believe in beginning to die thirty years before your time comes. Therefore Eleanor Kirk lived to the age of seventy-six years, with a mind bright, alert and receptive as it had been when she was twenty. She believed in the power of an immortal soul to manifest even physical comeliness so long as it remains on this earth, and wherever she went strangers always asked, "Who is that beautiful woman with the white hair?"

    When at last Eleanor Kirk passed from this life it was not because of sickness or old age, but the result of accident, an injury received in a fall at her home.

    As the world goes this teacher and practicer of the cheerful doctrine that in reality all is good had as hard a life as falls to most. At least that was true the first half of it, before she herself had lifted herself out of it. Her maiden name was Ellen Maria Easterbrooks. In private life she was Mrs. Ames. Eleanor Kirk was her nom de plume. She was born in Warren. R. I.

    She was born, too. with intense feeling and sympathy, a vivid imagination and a gift in the use of language. This naturally fitted her to be a writer, and writer she was from the beginning. She was also a loving, devoted family woman. In the sixties she was left with five little children dependent on her for support. With her pen brave Eleanor Kirk reared and nobly educated these children. She was for a time a reporter and special feature writer on the New York Standard, and John Russell Young was her editor in chief. In all weathers, in all places, all hours of the day or night, Mrs. Ames went wherever her work called her. She went fearlessly and ungrudgingly too. She never stopped for a second to consider whether this or that assignment was suitable for a woman. She just went and fulfilled the task.

    One summer when she went by the sea she was in an unusually exhausted state. She always kept a home for her children and attended to her domestic affairs. That summer when she had pulled herself and the family down by the sea and set up housekeeping it seemed to her she had come to the end of her rope mentally and physically. She felt as if she could not go a step further in the doing of two people's work. She was of a deeply spiritual nature, which welled up in her as an intense, living faith in God. In desperate emergencies she always called on the great unseen power for help, and help now, not next week or next year. She told me she always got it, especially as, like the little girl with her prayer, Eleanor Kirk did not "bother God about little things." These she worked put by her own common sense and industry.

    On this special occasion, lying upon the sands under the sky, with the sea murmuring around her, she demanded help from the unseen power which she believed in. Instantly the answer came to her in a conviction that she would never have to do regular newspaper work again. It flashed through her consciousness that another means of maintenance would open to her. It did. From that time Eleanor Kirk became a magazine and book writer. Poet she always had been.

    She was one of those grand, eternally progressing souls that can throw off and away old, wornout thoughts, habits and notions and take on always the new and the better as it comes to light. Twenty years ago the variously called new thought, divine metaphysics, mental science doctrine — whatever each one's preference pleases to name it — caught the open mind of Eleanor Kirk. It appealed to her as hardly anything had ever done in her life before. With her perennially youthful enthusiasm she seized upon it and made it her own. She became one of its most eloquent and faithful exponents. Few of the new thought writings are so earnest and impressive as those of Eleanor Kirk. Fifteen years ago, with heart and soul full of things she wanted to say on her own account, she founded Eleanor Kirk's Idea, one of the brightest, cheerfulest, most inspiring little magazines ever published in the interest of the new thought. After thirteen years of a merry, fairly prosperous existence it was discontinued, though Eleanor Kirk continued to write till the last.

    She loved all living creatures and sympathized with them. Consequently she drew all to her with the magnetism of white magic. The world this strong, beautiful soul has left will be the darker to those who knew Eleanor Kirk.

Reading

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