Helen Van Doorn Morgan has long been a mystery in terms of who she was, although her sheet music cover art is well-known to collectors. There are many inaccuracies in listings that include her name, including her true birthplace, birth year and year of death (meaning that the traditionally cited 1902-1986 lifespan is not correct). It was relatively difficult to find anything in official records on Ms. Morgan until her actual birth name was discovered, so hopefully this article will stand as a new and correct reference to this talented illustrator.

Helen was born in Quincy, Illinois, in the summer of 1899 to St. Louis, Missouri osteopath Dr. Herman Fred Goetz and his Illinois native wife Jessie Allison Morgan, who had been married in 1895. The 1900 census taken in Quincy showed the couple living with Jessie's parents, Joseph Morgan and her daughter's namesake Helen Van Doorn. After the loss of the next child, Jessie gave birth to Joseph Morgan Goetz in 1903. At some point over the next few years, Jessie's father died and her marriage ended. The 1910 enumeration taken in Chicago, Illinois, showed the now-divorced Jessie Goetz and her children residing with her widowed mother, and no occupation was listed for any of them.

During the 1910s both Helen and her brother Joseph (called by his middle name of Morgan for much of that period) managed to get formal training in commercial and fine arts. Helen was working for an art studio by 1919, and she declared as such for the 1920 census. In addition to what was potentially advertising art and posters, Helen, now using her mother's maiden name of Morgan, also started providing sheet music cover art to the F.J.A. Forster publishing house. A couple of them were featured on works composed by ragtime composer Charles L. Johnson for his post-ragtime publications. She would sign many of the Forster images from 1919 to 1926, and would also provide a handful for other Midwest publishers, including Milton Weil and Ernest Clinton Keithley. A 1923 Chicago directory showed Helen employed as an artist at 59 E. Van Buren Street. By this time, Joseph (having also taken his mother's name of Morgan) was working as a commercial artist as well.

Most likely in mid-to-late 1927, Helen and her brother and mother relocated to New York City. There she continued her career in commercial and sheet music art, now providing images largely for DeSylva, Brown and Henderson as well as the Red Star music publishing company. The 1930 census showed the family residing in Manhattan, all now officially using the last name of Morgan, as Helen had done for over a decade. The following year, Joseph was married and moved out of the residence.

After this the trail grows a bit thin, however there is enough to construct an overall narrative. It is difficult to find any of Helen's art gracing sheet music covers after 1930, so she was likely a victim of the Great Depression in that regard. However, she continued creating everything from paintings and sketches to sculptures, and even the occasional magazine cover. Helen was not readily located in the 1940 enumeration, so her whereabouts during the mid-1930s to around 1940 are unclear, albeit likely in New York or Pennsylvania. By the early 1940s Helen was married to Robert John Ruskin Williams (8/26/1885), a divorced artist also working in New York City. As he had been working in that field in Chicago in the early 1920s, it is highly likely they had known each other for some time. The couple was living in Carversville in far eastern Pennsylvania in the early 1940s. When Jessie died in 1946 following a serious fall, she was buried in Carversville, thus verifying the connection between Helen and Robert, as she had signed the informant slot on the death certificate as Helen Williams.

The 1950 census showed Robert, as Ruskin, and Helen, residing in Solebury, near Carversville. He was listed as a commercial artist for an advertising firm, and Helen surprisingly showed no occupation. In later years, Helen and Robert lived somewhere between Manatee and Sarasota in west-central Florida. Helen died in Sarasota in 1963 just three days after her 64th birthday. Robert died nearly three years later in Manatee at age 80. Both are resting at Sarasota Memorial Park, and the markers for each of them have an identical relief of an artist's palette with three brushes.

As for Helen's sheet music style, which was created predominantly from 1920 to 1930, it echoes many elements of the Art Deco school of that time, and could be described as simple for the most part, using a muted but earthy and harmonious color palette. This allowed focus on her human subjects, most of which were tall, thin and elegant. Many of the covers are vertically inclined, one of the characteristics of Art Deco. While not as prolific as many of her male peers, her name still stands out a century later as an important contributor to the transitional age of sheet music from the whimsical styles of the ragtime era to the largely templated style of the 1930s.