Biography

Florence Rickey George was born on November 9, 1885 in Marshalltown, Iowa, to Mary Forrey Rickey and David Rickey. She had several siblings and half-siblings including a brother Byron Rickey and a half-brother Jasper N. Rickey who was a photographer in Indianola, Iowa.

Florence Rickey lived with her mother, who ran a boarding house after the death of her husband. Rickey had an active social life which included an interest in social dances and photography. She kept up a lively correspondence with her friends and schoolmates including schoolteacher Dee Hanson, Iowa City photographer Dick Dreyer, and her future husband Edward George. Rickey attended the Iowa State Normal School from 1903 to 1904 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and began a program at the Central Iowa Business Program in 1906 but left to take a job before completing her degree. Rickey worked in a series of offices as a stenographer and bookkeeper, and as a bookkeeper at the Victoria Sanatorium in Colfax, Iowa. During 1912 Rickey underwent an operation to have her appendix removed. She spent the remainder of that year and 1913 as a patient at the Victoria Sanatorium.

Florence Rickey married Edward Henry George in 1918. They later adopted a daughter, Avis George. The Georges ran the Mission Café in Colfax, Iowa and struggled to sell the café in the late 1910s. From the late 1940s until his death in 1958 Edward George owned E. H. George Real Estate and Insurance in Marshalltown, Iowa. Florence George raised and sold championship-breed collies under the name Rickhaven Kennels from the Georges’ house in Marshalltown.

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