George Ade (February 9, 1866 – May 16, 1944) was an American writer, syndicated newspaper columnist, librettist, and playwright who gained national notoriety at the turn of the 20th century with his "Stories of the Streets and of the Town", a column that used street language and slang to describe daily life in Chicago, and a column of his fables in slang, which were humorous stories that featured vernacular speech and the liberal use of capitalization in his characters' dialog.

During the first quarter of the 20th century, Ade, along with Booth Tarkington, Meredith Nicholson, and James Whitcomb Riley helped to create a Golden Age of literature in Indiana.

[6] While working for the Chicago Record, Ade developed his talent for turning local human-interest stories into humorous satire, which became his trademark.

[8] Beginning in 1893, Ade was put in charge of the daily column, "Stories of the Streets and of the Town," which frequently included McCutcheon's illustrations.

These humorous stories, complete with morals, featured vernacular speech and Ade's idiosyncratic capitalization of the characters' dialog.

Ade's fables also appeared in periodicals, the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company produced them as motion-picture shorts, and Art Helfant also turned them into comic strips.

[4][17][18] Not all of Ade's theatrical productions were successes, such as The Bad Samaritan (1905), but three of his plays (The College Widow, The Sho-Gun, and The County Chairman) were simultaneously appearing on Broadway in 1904.

[4][20] By the mid-1920s, Ade's plays were no longer in fashion, but he continued to write essays, short stories, and articles for newspapers and magazines in addition to film scripts.

His fables in slang stories and series of books, in addition to making him wealthy, gained him notoriety as an American writer.

When the United States began a population shift as the first large wave of migration from rural communities to urban cities and the country transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy, Ade used his wit and keen observational skills to record in his writings the efforts of ordinary people to get along and to cope with these changes.

Because Ade grew up in a Midwestern farming community and also knew about urban living in cities like Chicago, he could develop stories and dialog that realistically captured daily life in either of these settings.

His fictional men and women typically represented the common, undistinguished, average Americans, who were often "suspicious of poets, saints, reformers, eccentricity, snobbishness, and affectation," as well as newcomers.

He was a big and pensive Literary Man, wearing a Prince Albert coat, a neat Derby Hat and godlike Whiskers.

[non-standard capitalization in original][24]In 1915, Sir Walter Raleigh, Oxford professor and man of letters, while on a lecture tour in America, called George Ade "the greatest living American writer.

"[26] By the early 1900s, after twelve years in Chicago, Ade's writing had brought him financial success and he retired to a leisurely life in the country.

[18][27] In 1902, George's brother, William Ade, purchased on his behalf a 417-acre (169-hectare) site of wooded land along the Iroquois River near the town of Brook in Newton County, Indiana.

Instead, Chicago architect Billie Mann, a Sigma Chi fraternity brother, designed for Ade a two-story, fourteen-room country manor, which was constructed at an estimated cost of US$25,000.

In addition to the Tudor Revival-style home, the property eventually included landscaped grounds, a swimming pool, greenhouse, barn, and caretaker's cottage, among other outbuildings.

Hazelden was the site where Republican William Howard Taft announced his candidacy for president of the United States and launched his campaign in 1908.

It was also used as the site for a political rally for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912 and a venue for an address from vice presidential candidate Charles W. Dawes in 1924.

In addition, Ade and Ross provided financial support construction of the facility, which was formally dedicated on November 22, 1924, and named Ross–Ade Stadium in their honor.

[19][29] Ade also led a fund-raising campaign to endow the Sigma Chi mother house at Miami University, where the fraternity was originally established.

Along with the works of other Hoosier writers, such as James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, and Meredith Nicholson, among others, Ade's writing was part of the Golden Age of Indiana Literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

His fables in slang gained him wealth and fame as an American humorist, in addition to earning him the nickname of the "Aesop of Indiana.

[4] While the presentations of his plays and musical comedies increased his wealth and international renown, Ade's legacy includes numerous newspaper columns, magazine articles, essays, and books that describe his perspective on American life in the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century.

[32] The Association disbanded in 2018, and, as of 2019, Newton county officials are assessing the home's condition and plans for restoring it for use as a public historic site and events venue.