Eugene E. Prussing Papers, 1928-1980

Gift of Rudolph E. Prussing, 1973 and 1976; Gift of Chicago Historical Society, 2012.

The Eugene E. Prussing Papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

The Eugene E. Prussing Papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Eugene E. Prussing Papers, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Jill Waycie, 2010 and Emma Martin, 2013.

This inventory was created with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this inventory do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Prominent Chicago and Hollywood lawyer and son of Ernst Prussing after whom the Prussing Elementary School in Chicago was named.

Father Ernst Prussing, born in Germany in 1824 (original name Prüssing), came to Chicago in 1849. He served on the Chicago Board of Education, co-founded Das Deutsche Haus and the Germania Männerchor, and was involved with the Underground Railroad and the Free Soil Party. He married Louise F. Peltzer in 1853, and had six children who lived to adulthood.

Eugene E. Prussing was born July 12, 1855 and attended the Newberry School, Chicago High School, and the University of Michigan’s law school in Ann Arbor. He married Louise Schenck in 1880 and had seven children -- Ella, Rudolph, Harry, Carl, Margaret, George, and Louise -- six of whom lived to adulthood. After Louise’s death in 1900, Prussing married Lillian Edgerton Barrett in 1902. There were no children from this second marriage. Later in life, Prussing spent half of the year in Evanston and the other half in Hollywood, California.

Prussing was a co-founder of the Law Club and the Judges’ Table at the Union League Club. He wrote a pamphlet entitled “Making Trust Companies Universal,” which was adopted as an act in Illinois in 1887 and 1889 and copied by many other states and countries. Other writings were “Chicago’s First Great Lawsuit,” about the Forsyth et al. vs. Nash case, George Washington in Love and Otherwise (1925), and The Estate of George Washington, deceased (1927).

Manuscript autobiography and related notes by Eugene E. Prussing (interleaved with photographs and clippings). Also clippings and letters relating to Prussing’s two books on George Washington, genealogical information about the Peltzer family, and a biography of father Ernst Prussing.

Eugene E. Prussing’s autobiography, entitled “An Attempt at an Autobiography,” spans his life from birth to approximately 1923 in two volumes. Family photographs and clippings are interspersed throughout the two volumes. The first volume includes a description of seeing Abraham Lincoln lying in state at the Court House, and a detailed account of fleeing the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. The second volume includes a short description of the 1893 World’s Fair, particularly regarding banking and trust companies.

Other materials include three volumes of autobiographical notes; an extensive genealogy of the Peltzer family and a typed biography of Prussing’s father, Ernst; and one folder of letters and clippings relating to Prussing’s George Washington writings.

Materials arranged alphabetically.

• Names
  • Law Club (Chicago, Ill.).
  • Prussing, Ernst, 1824-1889
  • Prussing, Eugene E. (Eugene Ernst), 1855-1936
  • Union League Club of Chicago.
  • Washington, George, 1732-1799
• Subject
  • Family Papers
  • Great Fire, Chicago, Ill., 1871
  • Manuscripts, American -- Illinois -- Chicago