Evelyn Raymond was an author living in Baltimore, Maryland who was an established writer when Edward Stratemeyer asked her to write the Dorothy Chester series.
Stratemeyer began to have problems with his publisher, Chatterton-Peck, and several lawsuits were the result. Eventually he was able to purchase the rights and plates for many series volumes from them to take them to a new publisher, Grosset & Dunlap.
As Chatterton-Peck tried to replace the numerous series that Stratemeyer withdrew from them, they contacted three of his authors they could identify, Howard R. Garis, Lilian C. Garis, and Evelyn Raymond. They asked if they would continue the series they had been writing directly for them, cutting Stratemeyer out of the loop. The Garises contacted Stratemeyer and informed him of the offer. Raymond did not. She actually wrote more volumes in what was planned to be a “Dorothy Chester” series but was ultimately called the Dorothy series.
Stratemeyer also owned an unpublished manuscript by Raymond, called “Children of the Refugio.” After his problems with Raymond and Chatterton-Peck, he no longer wanted to handle the manuscript. After offering it to several publishers, he succeeded in selling it to Penn who published it as Carlota of the Rancho (1909). This was not a Stratemeyer Syndicate-produced story and his interest in the story ended when he sold it outright to Penn.
