Lucy Fitch Perkins

The Belgian Twins Lucy Fitch Perkins

Lucy Fitch Perkins (July 12, 1865 - March 18, 1937) was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, known best for Dutch Twins (1911) and its sequels, the Twins series. Lucy Fitch was born on July 12, 1865 in Maples, Indiana, to Appleton Howe and Elizabeth (Bennett) Fitch. Her father was a teacher who moved to Maples to co-found a barrel stave factory. Her mother was a teacher. Fitch moved with her mother to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to live with her father's patents as her father tried to recover from a financial setback from the Panic of 1873. Unhappy with the Hopkinton schools, the family moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1879. Fitch graduated from high school in 1883 and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to attend the Museum of Fine Arts School. She met Dwight H. Perkins in her third year at the school. Fitch started to write children's fiction on a freelance basis for Young Folks. She graduated in 1886 and took a job as an illustrator for the Prang Educational Company of Boston. A year later, she followed Walter Scott Perry to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, to become his assistant. Fitch left on August 18, 1891, to marry Perkins and move to Chicago, Illinois. Perkins initially tended to the household, writing only on occasion. However, after her husband struggled in the aftermath of the Panic of 1893, Perkins began to write to supplement the family income. The Chicago office of the Prang Educational Company employed Perkins for the next 10 years, offering her opportunities to teach and illustrate. In 1905, her husband was appointed chief architect for the Chicago Board of Education, allowing them to support the construction of a new house in Evanston, Illinois