One of the first African American women to earn a college degree, Mary Church Terrell is best known as an activist working for civil rights and women’s rights. She is author of a memoir, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940). Terrell served on the DC Board of Education from 1895 to 1906, the first African […]
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Florence Jackson Stoddard
Florence Jackson Stoddard, a folklorist, journalist, suffragist, poet and fiction writer, lived at this address in the 1920s. She was the author of As Old As the Moon: Cuban Legends, Folklore of the Antilles (1909), Pascuala, and At the Shoe of Venus, and translator of Myths of the Quichuas, and Legends of the Guaranis. Stoddard worked for several periodicals; she was […]
Ellen Maury Slayden
Born into a wealthy Virginia family, Ellen Maury Slayden was married the successful cotton merchant James Luther Slayden who later served in Congress for over twenty years. A fixture in San Antonio society, Slayden worked as the society editor for the San Antonio Express. Slayden’s memoir Washington Wife was published after her death and recounts life in the capitol from […]
Molly Elliot Seawell
Molly Elliot Seawell was a prolific author of widely-read historical romances and nautical stories for boys during the Gilded Age. She wrote over forty books of fiction, short fiction, and non-fiction, as well as numerous political columns from Washington for New York dailies. Her books include: Little Jarvis (1890), A Virginia Cavalier (1897), Twelve Naval Captains (1898), The Fortunes of Fifi (1903), and The […]
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore was a geographer, photographer, and writer who became the first female Board member of the National Geographic Society. She was a native Washingtonian, raised in her mother’s boarding house, and working as a society journalist. She traveled to Japan many times between 1885 and 1928, sometimes in the company of her brother, George […]
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt is the author of over forty books. His subjects ranged from nature, travel adventure, American history, and the history of war, to biographies and an autobiography. Titles include: The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, New York (1877), Essays on Practical Politics (1888), The Winning of the West (four volumes, 1889-1896), The Rough Riders (1899), Oliver Cromwell (1900), Realizable Ideals (1913), A Book Lover’s Holiday […]
Cissy Patterson
Cissy Patterson was one of the first women to head a major daily newspaper, the Washington Times-Herald. She published two novels, Glass Houses (1926) and Fall Flight (1928), and her short fiction appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Patterson was born into a newspaper family. Her grandfather, Joseph Medill, edited the Chicago Tribune, and her brother was founder of the New York Daily News. Under her leadership, […]
Thomas Nelson Page
Thomas Nelson Page was a lawyer and the author of the story collection In Ole Virginia, published in 1887, among other books. Page served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1919. He moved into this mansion designed by Stanford White in 1893. Page popularized the Reconstruction-era “plantation tradition” in fiction, a racist, idealized version of life […]
Perle Mesta
Perle Mesta was U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1949 to 1953. She is best known, however, as a Washington socialite, knicknamed “The Hostess with the Mostest” for her lavish parties that combined national political figures with artists and entertainers. Mesta is the author of a memoir, Perle: My Story (1960). She moved to DC in 1940, and was active […]
Evalyn Walsh McLean
Evalyn Walsh McLean is the co-author of a memoir, Father Struck It Rich (1936), co-written with Boyden Sparkes. She was raised in the first address in Dupont Circle, one of the largest mansions in DC, built by her father in 1903. Walsh was a poor Irish immigrant who made a fortune operating one of the richest gold mines […]