Women Philanthropists Born in the 1850's

Women Philanthropists Born in the 1850’s

Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (1850-1921) inherited $10,000,000 from her father in 1884.  Beginning in 1892 she gave $350,000 to Roosevelt Hospital to help New York’s needy. Her money financed research programs in epidemiology and nutrition and set up health centers and dental clinics. She endowed a Fund of over $9,000,000 to continue this work   She contributed enough money to provide 2 million hot school lunches yearly.  The Children’s Aid Society received $500,000 for its programs. Interested also in higher education for women, she contributed $1,000,000 to Barnard College in 1896 for its building program.

During World War I she contributed to the relief funds for orphaned and homeless children.  In gratitude and appreciation the French government made her a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In her will she left sizable contributions to a variety of groups including Henry Street Settlement, Fisk University and Harlem Legal Aid Society.

Jeannette Thurber (1850-1946) improved facilities for musical education in the United States.  In 1885 she set up the American School of Opera with 84 pupils.  The first performance at the Academy of Music was artistically successful, but when the group failed to show a profit the next year, supporters deserted and the opera company folded.  Undismayed, in 1891 she renamed the institution the National Conservatory of Music, open to students of all races.  Its second director was Antonin Dvorak who held this position from 1892 to 1895 and composed his Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” while part of the school.  Other notable musicians joined the faculty and Thurber continued her support, but the public and the government ignored its financial needs.  A music critic summed up her contribution to music and musicians by saying that more was accomplished “by her failures than [by] other people’s successes.”

Mary Averill Harriman (1851-1932) continued her husband’s interest in helping underprivileged boys of New York’s East Side and supported the Trudeau Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York when she inherited $70,000,000 in 1909.  She established the Harriman State Park of about 10,000 acres with an endowment of a million dollars.  After World War I Harriman turned to aiding artists. She purchased a studio for the sculptor Malvina Hoffman.  She assisted professional American musicians who were often unable to get positions with established orchestras by founding the American Orchestral Society in 1920 with another million dollars.

Ellen Battell Stoeckel (1851-1939) used her 1899 inheritance to finance the creation of a new Choral Union of 700 members in Norfolk, Connecticut, which began as a showcase for the music of Gustave Stoeckel.  The group expanded and Norfolk Festivals continued for 17 years with added commissioned works by American and European composers.   Stoeckel willed her entire estate to the creation of summer schools at Yale University. The music school opened in 1941; in 1946 an art section opened.

Kate Nichols Trask (1853-1922) began writing poetry and novels in 1892 to lift the grief she suffered after the deaths of her 4 children in infancy or childhood.  Her most successful work was an antiwar play, In the Vanguard, in 1912.  She felt that a mystical sense of creativity and peace permeated the estate she and her first husband owned near Saratoga Springs, named Yaddo.  Beginning in 1899 she envisioned this estate as an artists’ colony.  Widowed in 1909 she continued her plans with the aid of her second husband George Peabody and the Yaddo center for artists and writers opened in 1926. They supported local charities and established the St. Christina Hospital for treatment of crippled children.

Mary Elizabeth Garrett (1854-1915) with 4 women friends founded Bryn Mawr School for Girls in 1885.  Garrett was president of its board of trustees and provided $300,000 in 1890.  Beginning in 1893 Garrett provided $10,000 annually to Bryn Mawr College when M. Carey Thomas was promoted from dean to president.  Her gifts to the college totaled almost $350,000, including payment of annual deficits.

  In 1889 Garrett and friends raised  $111,300 (Garrett herself donated almost $50,000) for Johns Hopkins University for a medical school on  the condition women be admitted on the same terms as men.  The University agreed and  accepted the money in 1891.  In 1893 the medical  school opened as an unequaled American graduate institution.

Louisine Elder Havemeyer (1855-1929) was an art collector and supporter of Mary Cassatt and other impressionistic artists.  Widowed in 1907, Havemeyer added the drive for suffrage to her interests.  She helped Alice Paul found the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.  For its benefit she exhibited her paintings and spoke at rallies where her famous name brought crowds.  In 1915 she attempted to burn an effigy of President Wilson on the White House lawn.  She was arrested and spent 3 days in the notorious Washington workhouse.

Grace Dodge (1856-1914) began working with her wealthy parents on New York charities in the 1870s and 1880s.  She organized the Industrial Education Association which fostered school classes of manual training for boys and domestic skills for girls.  Seeing the need for more teachers, she worked for the establishment of Teachers College at Columbia in 1892.  She was treasurer from 1892 to 1911, using her skills in practical matters of land, building and endowments.  In 1907 she gave $400,000 for a household arts building.  Her interest in sports led to starting the Girls’ Public School Athletic League.  Her will left $1,500,000 to causes she had served.

Louise Whitfield Carnegie (1857-1946) shared Andrew Carnegie’s interests in horseback riding, music and books.  After their marriage in 1887 Louise applauded Andrew’s generous instincts, his Gospel of Wealth doctrine and his interest in international peace during their 32 year marriage.  After his death in 1919 she promoted American participation in the League of Nations.

Elizabeth Mills Reid (1858-1931) inherited almost $25,000,000 in 1910 and followed her father’s example of funding and keeping in touch with the institutions she supported.  In 1912 she helped create the Red Cross Rural Nursing Service. The same year she inherited a controlling interest in the New York Tribune.  She served on the board of the Mills Training School for Male Nurses in New York. In 1912 she helped build the D.O.Mills Training School for Nurses at the Trudeau Sanatorium at Saranac Lake. She built Mills Memorial Hospital in San Mateo, California in 1912 and left it a $500,000 bequest.

Her work in World War I included being deputy commissioner of the Red Cross in London.  In 1922 she was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government for her work in endowing hospital rooms and outfitting ambulances.

Better known in social circles as Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, she entertained royalty in England as the ambassador’s wife from 1905 to 1912.

Louise Bowen (1859-1953) financially supported Jane Addams’ Hull House beginning with the opening of the Woman’s Club about 1893 which taught women how to conduct meetings and present problems to authorities.  In 1903 she became a Hull House trustee and in 1907 the treasurer.  She personally funded the construction of the Woman’s Club and the Boys’ Club.  She donated a 72-acre summer campsite

In 1912 Bowen raised more than $12,000 for food for the hungry children of striking garment workers.  In 2002 dollars that would be more than $214,300. After Addams’ death in 1935 Bowen served as president of the board for 9 years.  Hull House probably would not have survived without her financial support and organizational abilities.