Francis D. Grady

Born 1894 in Springfield Corners, Madison, WI

Grady was born in 1893 on a farm near Springfield Corners, fifteen miles west of Madison, where he lived until he was three. His father was a country schoolteacher and a part-time farmer in Waunakee.

Three years later the family went back to farming near Oregon, where Grady lived and worked until he was twenty-one years of age. He attended Oregon High School, but left when he was 14 to work full time on his father's place and as an occasional hired hand on nearby farms.

He always liked to draw pictures, but there was no encouragement for a natural and persistent interest in art. As far back as he could remember, he would stand at a table and draw things. "I fooled around so much with my pictures that my pencil was taken away from me because I neglected my school work." This continued into high school, until he found others who also liked to draw. They often drew pictures as a group during their spare time, spurring each other on in pencil work and blackboard drawing.

During the first World War he spent sixteen months in France. Periods of hectic and sometimes dangerous activity with the engineers were followed by lulls of boredom and idleness. It was then that the pleasurable