Full Name Edith Minturn | Role Philanthropist Name Edith Stokes | |
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Children Helen Phelps Stokes (adopted daughter) Relatives Robert Bowne Minturn (paternal grandfather)Robert Gould Shaw (maternal uncle) Henry Dwight Sedgwick (brother-in-law)Amos Pinchot (brother-in-law)Rosamond Pinchot (niece)Edwin Katte Merrill (son-in-law)Donald Bush (son-in-law) Died June 12, 1937, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States | ||
Grandparents Robert Bowne Minturn Parents Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr. | ||
Edith Minturn Stokes (20 June 1867 - 12 June 1937) was an American philanthropist, artistic muse and socialite during the Gilded Age.
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Early life and family background
Edith Minturn was born on 20 June 1867 in West Brighton, in Staten Island, New York City. She was the third child and second daughter of shipping magnate Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr. (1836-1889) and his wife Susannah Shaw (1839-1926). The Minturn family was well connected both politically, and with other prominent families via marriage. Her uncle, Robert Gould Shaw, was killed while commanding the nation’s first all-black regiment.
Edith was educated at home, with music and French lessons, and went on a Grand Tour of Europe, as was then expected of society women.
Minturn had several siblings. Her brother Robert Shaw Minturn married Bertha Howard Potter, granddaughter of Bishop Alonzo Potter, niece of Henry Codman Potter, and great-granddaughter of Eliphalet Nott. Her sister Sarah May Minturn married Henry Dwight Sedgwick. They were grandparents of Edie Sedgwick and great-grandparents of Kyra Sedgwick. Their son Robert Minturn Sedgwick married Helen Peabody, daughter of Endicott Peabody. Her sister Mildred Scott married Arthur Hugh Scott, headmaster of a French boarding school for boys. They eventually relocated to England. Her sister Gertrude Minturn married Amos Richard Eno Pinchot. They had two children, one of whom, Rosamond Pinchot, was an actress famed mostly for her great beauty.
Philanthropy and artistic muse
She was the President of the New York Kindergarten Association, ran a sewing school for immigrant women, and was a benefactor of St. George's Church in New York City.
Edith Minturn Stokes began modelling by participating in the then popular pastime known as tableaux vivants; she was spotted at these and became a model for Daniel Chester French in his Greenwich Village ateleier.
So it was that she posed for his sculpture "The Republic", which was a centerpiece of the Court of Honor of the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. It was a 65-foot-high (20 m) plaster statue covered in gold leaf, and with an illuminated crown. The sculpture was destroyed by fire in 1896 and the sculptor was commissioned to produce a smaller version, the Statue of the Republic, a 24-foot-tall (7.3 m) gilded bronze sculpture that was erected in 1918 and still stands.
Peter Marié accumulated a collection of watercolor-on-ivory miniatures of society beauties, and she was one of those he selected. These are now on display at the New-York Historical Society Museum.
John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Isaac and Edith Stokes is on display in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Personal life
On 25 August 1895, at Pointe-á-Pic, Quebec, she married Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867-1944). The couple had no biological children, but did adopt Helen, a daughter of Raj Lieutenant Colonel Maldion Byron Bicknell and his wife Mildred Bax-Ironside, who did not want to raise children in India, where they were stationed. She was adopted in 1908 when she was about 3 years old, and after the adoption was known as Helen Phelps Stokes. She married twice, first in 1928 to Edwin Katte Merrill, and had two daughters and two sons. Her second husband was Donald Bush. She died in 2004.
Death
She suffered from a series of strokes in late life, and died on 12 June 1937 in her home at 953 Fifth Avenue, New York City.