Followers of the Saturday Evening Post are no doubt familiar with Norman Rockwell's iconic illustrations. But many may not realize that another illustrator with a similar style, Frances Tipton Hunter, was born in Centre County and raised in Williamsport.

In June of 2024, officials with the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, the Lycoming County Women’s History Project, and others were on hand for unveiling of a historical marker honoring the noted illustrator.

 Hunter was born in Howard, Pennsylvania, in 1896 to Michael Howard, an insurance salesman, and Laura Tipton. After her mother’s death, Hunter and her older brother, Harold, moved in with her aunt and uncle Frances and Edward McEntire in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, when she was 5 or 6.

While attending Williamsport High School, Hunter illustrated for the school’s Cherry and White publication and played “unimpressive basketball,” according to herself. In 1914, during her senior year, Hunter received first prize in a Williamsport Civic Club essay contest about her three favorite artworks at a James V. Brown Library art exhibition. The judges agreed that she best interpreted the artists’ meaning of the paintings.

On the Saturday Evening Post website, the magazine provides this background on Hunter’s career: “After graduating in 1914, she moved to Philadelphia to further her career in art and illustration. She attended many art schools and institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Industrial Discipline, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Fleisher Art Memorial. She graduated from each institution with honors. At the end of her studies in Philadelphia, she received an art scholarship that allowed her to move to New York City. There she began her career illustrating fashion for department-store children’s clothing lines.

Hunter quickly rose to fame and recognition in the art world, becoming one of the most prominent female illustrators of the 20th century. Her early work captured depictions of children and pets, popular subjects of the 1920s and ’30s. Before her first commission for The Saturday Evening Post, Hunter’s work lined the covers and pages of magazines and periodicals such as Women’s Home Companion, Collier’s, Liberty, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies’ Home Journal.

A wide variety of her work was published as advertisements, puzzles, paper dolls, and calendar art. Her paper dolls, featured in Frances Tipton Hunter’s Paper Dolls and The Frances Tipton Hunter Picture Book, grew into a popular series later taken up by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin.

Hunter also provided illustrations for companies including Lambert Pharmacal (Listerine); National Carbon Company (Eveready Products); Firestone Tire and Rubber Company; and Westinghouse Lamp Company.

While spending much of her career in Philadelphia, Hunter moved back to Williamsport for about six years. While in Williamsport for the 1956 Sesquicentennial, Hunter was named one of the first Pennsylvania ambassadors by the state Chamber of Commerce and was named “A Distinguished Daughter of Williamsport.”

After a yearlong illness, Frances Tipton Hunter died on March 3, 1957, at the Philadelphia Jefferson Hospital. She is buried in Howard, Pennsylvania. [1]