Born in Chester, NH, William E. Dennis was a noted penman of the early 20th century.

A history of his hometown of Chester marked his then-recent death with these words:

"WILLIAM E. DENNIS, son of Green Dennis, a native of Newburyport, Mass., who came to Chester in I850, was born in Chester, 22 Aug. 1858. He early displayed skill in penmanship and at the age of seventeen entered Bryant and Stratton's School in Manchester where he became more proficient with the pen under the instruction of G. A. Gaskell. He gave instruction to classes in penmanship in Chester and later was a teacher of penmanship in Brooklyn, N. Y. Later he opened an office in New York for engrossing and illuminating memorials and testimonials and attended art schools. The art of illustrating having grown more popular in the last forty years enabled him to establish a good business in the art of illustration. His recent death closes a remarkable career in this new vocation." - from A History of Chester, NH, including Auburn: A supplement

Family memories:

William E. Dennis was descended on both sides from Revolutionary War veterans. His father came from a long line of mariners in Massachusetts, and his mother from a New Hampshire family with early roots in Rockingham County, including the Scottish Prisoner of War Alexander Gordon. On his mother's side he was also descended from a woman who had been falsely accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials.

Though his profession took him to Brooklyn, he deeply loved his native New Hampshire and remained loyal to his family and committed to his hometown. Though he had no children of his own, a nephew and grand-nephew both carried on his name.

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OBITUARY - The Brooklyn Standard Union (NY), Sun. June 8, 1924

William E. Dennis, well known penman, died Friday [June 6, 11 AM] in Prospect Heights Hospital. He was born in New Hampshire sixty-five years ago and had been a resident of Brooklyn for forty years. He was a member of Anthon Lodge, 679, F. and A. M. He is survived by his widow, Elizabeth McAlpine Dennis. The funeral services will be conducted at 2:30 P.M. today by the Rev. Dr. Frederick Stiehier. Interment will be at Lutheran Cemetery under direction of H. J. Flood, 297 Van Brunt street.

FUNERAL - Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sun. June 8, 1924, pg. 24

William E. Dennis of 374 Fulton St. on Friday, husband of Elizabeth McAlpine Dennis. Funeral services Sunday, June 8, 1924, at Lafayette Chapel, 38 Lafayette Ave. Interment Evergreens Cemetery (Brooklyn).

DENNIS - Members of Anthon Lodge, No. 769, F. & A. M., are requested to attend the funeral service of our late brother, William E. Dennis, Sunday, June 8, 2:30 o'clock, at the chapel, 38 Lafayette Ave. Emil H. Kegel, Master. Charles J. Williams, Secretary.

[The Anthon Lodge, No. 769, was affiliated with the Order of Freemasons, one of many lodges in Brooklyn, NY. F & A.M. is an abbreviation for 'Free and Accepted Masons']

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Elizabeth R. (McAlpine) Dennis was the sole beneficiary of William E. Dennis' estate, valued at $8,000. His will, written on April 30, 1895, was filed in Brooklyn on June 13, 1924. Soon after his death, Dennis' will was challenged by Howard Miles, his nephew, from Providence, RI, and a housekeeper named Anna Morley, who cooked and cleaned for Mr. Dennis for six years in his two-room apartment above his studio. Neither claim was successful. Howard Miles said that he was in possession of a revised will, but he was late in bringing it to the attention of the court in Brooklyn.

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On June 8, 1924, William E. Dennis was buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. The following year, on April 21, 1925, Elizabeth (McAlpine) Dennis, William's wife, moved his remains to the McAlpine family plot at Forest View Cemetery in Winsted, Litchfield County, CT.

In 1924, the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn was predominantly a Lutheran Cemetery. Forest View is a secular cemetery that is located about 26 miles northwest of Hartford, CT.

Elizabeth was originally from CT. She died in Brooklyn on Jan. 17, 1934 at the age of 71 and was buried with William. Elizabeth's parents, William H. McAlpine (1827-1878), a tailor, and Lydia Hunter (1831-1911) are also buried there. Both of her parents were born in Scotland.

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WILLIAM E. DENNIS - Biography

- from "Spencerian Script and Ornamental Penmanship, Volume I" by Michael Sull, master penman, expert on penmanship, author of books on cursive handwriting and Spencerian script and ornamental penmanship.

Among the ranks of penmen, there were few indeed who earned the respect and admiration of his peers to a greater degree than William E. Dennis. As a man beloved by the members of his profession, he rates with E. W. Bloser, C. P. Zaner and even P. R. Spencer. As a skilled penman in every field of penmanship and pen art, he ranked above them all. In the eyes of his contemporaries and those penmen who followed after his death, he was often regarded as the finest all around penman who ever lived. To this day, his work remains unchallenged and undoubtedly will remain so.

Born in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1860, Dennis' interest in penmanship started in 1875 at the age of 15 when he secured a copy of Gaskell's Compendium of Penmanship. He studied the plates in the text and sent his lessons to Gaskell for critique. Two years later he enrolled in Gaskell's school and was widely promoted by the great penman as "Gaskell's boy wonder." It was at that institution where Dennis made friends with his new classmate A. N. Palmer, a treasured association that lasted through both men's lifetimes.

While a young man in his twenties, Dennis tried several lines of work as a clerk, but found them too boring for his taste. He decorated the ledger books in his charge with fancy birds and scrolls, but it seems that this did little to impress his employers, for he was fired from no less than three jobs! His fortunes changed and his career path became guided when shortly thereafter he met A. R. Dunton one of the most skilled penmen of the 19th century. Under Dunton's guidance, Dennis learned much practical use for his pen, as well as many advanced techniques of penmanship.

During his career as a penman and engrosser, W. E. Dennis was known as an expert of the highest caliber in all forms of ornamental penmanship, shaded "display" scripts, and text lettering. He was considered a genius at offhand flourishing, and was acclaimed as "America's Dean of Engrossing." In 1909 he met Mr. Willis Baird, and in 1914 the two men formed a partnership in Brooklyn, New York. It was also in that same year that the American Penman published a superb collection of ornamental penmanship by Dennis entitled "Studies In Pen Art," copies of which were eagerly sought by penmen of his day and are prized by collectors today

For many years until his death, William E. Dennis maintained his studio in Brooklyn and produced work of superlative quality. His death at age 64 on June 6, 1924 was a shock to the penmanship profession. A slightly built man of 5'6" and 135 pounds, his passing resulted from pneumonia after an illness of only three days. Numerous Master Penmen eulogized him, but perhaps none better than his dear friend Samuel E. Bartow: "Dennis was to the penmanship profession what such painters as Whistler, Sargent and Da Vinci were to the art world. His book known as 'Studies in Pen Art' forms one of the most enduring monuments to that Greatest of Great all around penman, W E. Dennis."

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"The Passing of W. E. Dennis" by Earl A. Lupfer, published in 'The Business Educator' in June 1924, page 33.

Just before going to press with this issue of 'The Business Educator,' we received the sad news that W. E. Dennis, Brooklyn, N.Y., passed away at the Brooklyn Heights Hospital of pneumonia.

Mr. Dennis was born in Chester, N. H., in 1860. At the age of 15 he became interested in penmanship through Gaskell's Compendium and at 17 he entered Gaskell's Business College, Manchester, N.H., and later took work under A. R. Dunton, both leading penmen of their day.

Mr. Dennis taught penmanship for several years in Wright's College in Brooklyn and in Pierce College, Philadelphia. Having a great desire to do fine pen work and engrossing he established an engrossing studio in Brooklyn, where he spent more than forty years of his life executing much of the finest penmanship and engrossing that has been produced in this country.

Probably no other penman executed more or finer work in this line, and few have done more to promote the interests of the profession. He was always glad to show others and to help them over the rough places. Many of his characteristic, encouraging, personal letters are preserved and will be cherished for years to come.

Mr. Dennis produced a surprisingly large number of specimens of flourishing which rank among the finest ever produced. His work in lettering, engrossing and illuminating was of such a high quality that it has been imitated by a large number of of students and professional engrossers; in fact, Mr. Dennis was one of the leaders in his work for many years.

Mr. Dennis was a close student of art and designing, and every specimen contained characteristics which made it easy to distinguish his work from that of other penmen.

While he developed a very profitable engrossing business, usually employing three or four assistants, his greatest accomplishment was the service rendered in developing his profession to which he gave wholeheartedly and often.

The penmanship profession has lost a truly great penman and friend.

- E. A. Lupfer.

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- A. N. Palmer, Dedication, Studies in Pen Art by W. E. Dennis, published in 1914 by The A. N. Palmer Company.

WILLIAM E. DENNIS and I were pupils together in the Gaskell, Bryant & Stratton Business College of Manchester,NewHampshire. We were then in our teens, and to our youthful minds nothing else in the world was quite so important or beautiful as ornate penmanship.

No matter how hot the weather, no matter how luring the outdoor with its swimming pool, trees and flowers, young Dennis and L from choice, would climb to the fourth floor of the business block in which Gaskell kept school, and revel in the fascinating compound curves, shades and hair-lines that made up the anatomy of birds, which had neither home nor ancestry.

My boy friend and chum, " Bill* ' Dennis, was grace personified in all his manipulations of the pen, I was the opposite. The strokes I made lacked symmetry and grace. When practicing in my room, seeing only my own work, and having none of my boy friend's penmanship to contrast with it. I frequently thought I was doing beautifully. All I had to do, however, to reduce my pride and satisfaction to the ashes of a dead hope, was to go to Dennis' room and contrast my work with what he had been doing at the same time.

Frequently, during that hot summer, Dennis would write a dozen cards which had been ordered; we would deliver them, and with the twenty-five cents thus obtained would buy a watermelon. Young Dennis was generous then; he is generous now. He has always been free-hearted, and his purse often has been opened too widely for his own good.

I long ago gave up the race for supremacy in this branch of penmanship and turned my attention to the plain,unshaded, coarse pen style,which I believe everyone should learn. Had my muscles been as supple, my eye as true, and my hand as steady as were those of William E. Dennis, I might at this time be dividing honors with him.

I believe that every penman who turns the following pages will be willing to join me in proclaiming William E. Dennis the most expert ornate penman of the world. Perhaps there will never be another penman with the same artistic nature and the same ability and patience that have been displayed by him. He is the king of ornate penmanship...

A. N. Palmer

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"THREE MASTER CRAFTSMEN," by Charles T. Cragin, was published in the December, 1924 issue of 'The Business Educator' (pages 20-21). Cragin paid tribute to three of America's greatest calligraphers, who were also among his closest friends: Louis Madarasz (1859-1910), Charles P. Zaner (1864-1918) and William E. Dennis (1958-1924). Here are Cragin's recollections of Dennis...

I was twenty-two years old when I entered the employ of George A. Gaskell, principal and owner of the Bryant & Stratton Business College, Manchester, New Hampshire. I was lean, and long, and thin; so thin I didn't even cast a shadow except on very bright, sunshiny days. I climbed four long, crooked and very dirty flights of stairs to reach the rooms occupied by the school, and as Gaskell showed me into the large schoolroom where I was to be master of ceremonies for the next two years, I saw at a table, folding papers, a couple of young fellows a few years younger than myself. One was the subject of this part of my sketch of "Three Master Craftsmen." He wasn't bigger than a "pint of cider," to use a New England expression. I thought at first he was only a little boy, but he was nearly my own age. The other, almost as thin as myself, was very different in appearance from the portly A. N. Palmer of today.

From that time in the far-distant past, to the day in June of the present year when Dennis joined the "great majority," he had been an intimate friend of mine. I probably knew him as well as anybody gets to know another; and every year and sometimes oftener, as we grew older, we have managed to meet for a talkfest either at his rooms in New York or at mine in Holyoke.

Dennis was born at Derry, New Hampshire, not Manchester, as most of the sketches of him relate. He came in from this little country town a few miles out, to get inspiration from Gaskell, and he got more of it than any other pupil of that brilliant but erratic genius, who didn't give out much inspiration unless he took a liking. Dennis had purchased a Gaskell's Compendium, made remarkable improvement in his already pretty good work, and Gaskell had published his name in the "Before- and After-using Advertising" which he was one of the first to use.

Young Bill, as we called him, had just struck his "stride" when I came to Manchester, and it was some stride, too. He flourished amazing specimens of all kinds of birds, beasts and creeping things; nothing in the heavens above nor on the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth escaped the pen and ink of young Bill Dennis. They were not very finished productions then, not the high art of Henry Spencer or Flickinger, but they had the dash, the life, the vigor and the accuracy of spacing and shading that in later years made Dennis's flourished work supremely good.

I think the youngster would have perished for lack of food and sleep if we others, Gaskell, Palmer and myself had not occasionally pried him out of his chair and sent him out to get food and drink and at night a few hours of sleep. If anybody thinks it is play to become such a workman as Dennis, Madarasz, or Zaner, get the idea out of your system. There are lots of people who are natural penmen, artists, musicians; but you don't become a Dennis, a Meissonier, or a Paderewski without a large amount of downright hard work, and this young fellow did it. He was a marvel of industry in the two years I knew him at the school, and then he went with A. R. Dunton and learned a lot from that rough genius, who had a superb vocabulary of words not found in the dictionary.

Dennis had little education, but he went to the Bryant & Stratton Business College of H. E. Hibbard of Boston, another rough but warmhearted leader in Commercial Education. Then followed an itinerant tour of the country, which, Dennis told me, didn't add to his moral or intellectual standing. He wrote cards. It was an easy matter to pick up five dollars or so in an hour or two, for he could do dashing card work and do it like lightning, and it was just as easy to spend the five dollars in a manner that would not be approved by any Sunday School Superintendent.

He came back East after going as far as the Mississippi in the West, and for a short time he was with Pierce of Philadelphia, where he taught some penmanship classes but was not a howling success as a teacher of penmanship, and Wright of Long Island had him with similar results. Then, a good many years ago, he began business as an engrosser in Brooklyn, where the remaining years of his life were passed in building up a business which at the time of his death was yielding him a very good income.

Dennis, during his first year in Brooklyn, taught some classes in the Y.M.C.A. and City Night School, which helped him greatly to get a start. He soon attracted the attention of those who wished resolutions engrossed, and he always had, after his work was known, a large and profitable business in filling out diplomas. He worked with amazing rapidity. I never saw anybody who could slash off German Text, Old English, Church Text, or anything in the engrossing line with the same speed and dash. He could not do the absolutely accurate work of his afterwards partner, Willis Baird, but in off-hand flourishing, bold dashing, all-alive work, neither John D. Williams, the old-time wonder of the Bryant & Stratton Chain of Business Colleges, nor George A. Gaskell, who was the superior of Williams, were in the same class with Dennis.

You can hide a good deal of slovenly work in flourished specimens, but you won't find any of it in the specimens of "Bill the Bug," as he always signed his humorously illustrated, familiar letters that he sent to me from time to time. His command of the pen in his best day, when he yet was full of enthusiasm for such work, was wonderful.

Every year, after the rush of diploma filling was over, he spent a couple of months, July and August generally, among the hills and vales of his native New England — and New Hampshire, his birthplace and mine, is the Switzerland of America with beautiful landscape everywhere. He liked to tramp through this region and when he was in the field, postcards flew thick and fast with views of rare beauty. The last time I saw him he was in excellent health, on a tramping tour, and he told me that he expected to live to be anywhere from 96 to 110 years of age, but "you never can tell." It doesn't make any difference what you expect; when you are sent for, you have to go, and I have no doubt that the rush of work which came to him in May and June of this year kept him worked far beyond his strength. He had a habit of working all night when a rush came. He had a splendid helper, Mr. Lowe, a Korean, who also had a habit of working all night when there was a rush, and Lowe died just as Dennis did, after two or three days' illness of pneumonia developing from a cold.

It was a great shock to me, when somebody in Providence wrote to inform me that Dennis was dead, after three days' illness. I expected him around here on his annual summer tramp, but he is only a pleasant and cherished memory to those friends, who like myself are looking towards the sunset.

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THE BLUE BOOK - L.E. Stacy - 1907

Mr. W. E. Dennis was born in Chester, New Hampshire, in 1860. At the age of 15 he secured a copy of Gaskell's Compendium and made considerable progress by practicing during his odd moments. For two years he practiced without a teacher and at the age of 17 entered Gaskell's Business College, Manchester, New Hampshire, Mr. Dennis completed a course under Gaskell and prepared a number of large pieces of pen work. He then taught writing classes as an itinerant teacher, and later came under the instruction of Mr. A. R. Dunton who trained him in engrossing, preparing script copy, etc. Mr. Dennis next went to Brooklyn and taught for several years in Wright's College, and later at Peirce [sic] College, Philadelphia, for one year.

For the past 17 years Mr. Dennis has been the leading engrosser and pen artist of Brooklyn. He has attended art colleges and lectures and supplemented these courses by the study of designing, engraving, etc. He has built up a profitable business and keeps two assistants busy in addition to what he is able to do himself. For engrossing resolutions, etc., he receives prices ranging from $100 to $250. He has all of the work he can do in the cheaper grades, running from $10 to $50. Except during the summer months, Mr. Dennis has from six to twelve sets of resolutions ahead of him and finds that his business is increasing from year to year. He is a master in the use of water colors and the art of illumination.

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This memorial, including, biographical information and photographs, has been researched and compiled by Thomas W. Costello, great-grandson of P. W. Costello (1866-1935), master penman, engrosser and illustrator from Scranton, PA.

Mr. Costello was a self-taught artist who, as the son of poor Irish immigrants, was denied the opportunity to attend art school. In 1903, early in his career, perhaps at the suggestion of Charles P. Zaner, Mr. Costello spent a few days with W. E. Dennis at his studio in Brooklyn. It's likely that Mr. Dennis gave him instruction in engrossing design and layout, and may have advised him on how to promote his engrossing business. Following Mr. Dennis' death in 1924, Mr. Costello wrote this letter to Earl Lupfer in Columbus. It was published in The Business Educator, together with many other positive remembrances from penmen throughout the country.

Mr. E. A. Lupfer, The Business Educator, Columbus, 0hio

My Dear Lupfer:

The passing of William E. Dennis, Brooklyn, engrossing and illuminating artist, dean of his profession, was indeed a great shock to me, as it must have been to many thousands who were privileged to call him friend.

He was one of the very finest characters I have ever known, and the last time I saw him he jokingly told me, after complimenting him on how well he stood the years, that he was surely going to live out a full century.

His all around ability was generally recognized, and he leaves a void in the profession that will be very difficult to fill.

Peace to his ashes.

Very sincerely,

P. W. Costello, Scranton, Pa. July 5, 1924.

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Please note: the contributions above the first break in text are from Mr. Dennis' family. The rest are from former admins of this memorial.