1873-1954
Lilan McNamara wrote for the Newark News in charge of “Women’s Work”, their first female reporter (“the first woman to be given regular salaried employment”). She married Howard Garis and wrote hundreds of books for the Stratemayer syndicate, some under pen names. Born in Ohio to Irish immigrants Winifred and Edward, she moved to Belleville by 1880 and Newark by 1893, when she was featured in the New Jersey Scrapbook of Women Writers for the World’s Fair.
She married Mr. Garis in 1900. Before marriage she lived at 161 Summer Ave with her mother.
In the Newark News review of her first book in 1904, set in Belleville, they explained how she was a frequent contributor to the Newark News and Sunday News. As a child, she contributed a poem to the News and thereafter became their youngest contributor. Additionally, the News reported, she had gone to the Board of Public Works supporting playgrounds and gotten more playgrounds built.
Her earliest stories and poems in the News are credited to Lillian Mack or Lilian Mack and can be found in the digitized Newark News and Sunday Call starting in 1892.
Lilian Garis is one of the writers who always wrote, She expressed herself in verse from early school days and it was then predicted that Lilian Mack would one day become a writer. Justifying this sentiment, while still in high school, she took charge of the woman’s page for a city paper and her work there attracted such favorable attention that she left school to take entire charge of woman’s work for the largest daily in an important Eastern city.
— Advertisement in Polly and Eleanor, Lillian Elizabeth Roy. Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 192
The couple moved around NJ, but lived at Myrtle Ave in Newark in 1920, later they lived in East Orange, and South Orange and moved out of New Jersey in 1951.
Bibliography
“Mrs. HR Garis is Dead at 81” Newark News Apr 19, 1954
“A Pleasant Story in a Local Setting” Newark News Mar 5, 1904
Marquardt, Janet. “Howard and Lilian Garis House – 97 Spring Street”. Amherst Historic. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
“The Once Great Newark Evening News: A Remembrance & Obituary”. newarkmemories.com. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
Yardley, Margaret Tufts; New Jersey; World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). The New Jersey scrap book of women writers. Newark, N.J.: Advertiser Printing House.
“The Lilian Garis Books By Lilian Garis”. c.web.umkc.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
Baird, Christine V. “A Rabbit for the Ages” Star Ledger. Mar 27, 2005.
Kukla, Barbara J. Newark Women: From Suffragettes to the Statehouse.
G-05 Garis, Howard, Newark News Morgue, Newark Evening News, Newark Library
NJ Marriage Records
“Over Forth Authoresses” Sunday Call Jan 22, 1893
“From Women’s Pens” Sunday Call Dec 25, 1892
“Garis, M’Namara Nupitals” Newark News Apr 27, 1900
https://newark.historyarchives.online/home
“New Jersey, State Census, 1885”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:65JF-VW2 : Sun Jan 19 08:18:46 UTC 2025), Entry for Winifred Mcnamara and Euphreisa Mcnamara, 1885.
“United States, Census, 1880”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MN8S-RJL : Tue Oct 21 20:53:52 UTC 2025), Entry for Ed. McNamarra and Winnifred McNamarra, 1880.
US Censuses Howard and Lilian Garis.