PAGE 2 — Addison Independent | ARTS+LEISURE | Thursday, March 25, 2021

IN CELEBRATION OF Last year The Sheldon Museum published several articles about remarkable local women in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the F R O M T H E S H E L D O N MUSEUM ARCHIVES 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which WOMEN’S granted most American women the right to vote. In this two-part series, The Sheldon Museum will focus on two amazing women who challenged the status quo of late 19th- HISTORY MONTH century life. Their stories ofer just a glimpse of what is hidden in the Sheldon’s archives. HISTORY MAKERS, PART I: THE STATESMAN’S DAUGHTER

his past summer, archivist Eva Kentucky lawyer. Sophonisba’s aptitude for six-year-old W.C.P, accusing him of reneging Garcelon-Hart and I discovered two learning led her north to the “Adamless Eden” on his promise to marry her. Still in mourning portrait drawings in the Sheldon of , with her father’s support. for her mother, Sophonisba looked on as the archives. Inscriptions reveal the When she complained of homesickness scandal gripped the nation and newspapers pair to be “Miss Nisba Breckinridge” during her frst months at Wellesley, W.C.P. denounced her father as a “wild beast” and a and “Colonel Breckinridge.” exhorted her: “Now that you are there my “rapist.” Sophonisba Breckinridge (1866- darling girl, you must conquer.” Sophonisba 1948) was a pioneering social fourished at Wellesley, but longed for While Sophonisba’s admiration for her reformer and Colonel graduation, when she would fnally be able father never faltered, the trial was a turning TBYTAYLOR William C.P. Breckinridge “to go out and fght” for the causes she had point for her. With the Breckinridge name ROSSINI (1837-1904), her father, debated from the collegiate ivory tower. muddied and the family fnances faltering, a celebrated Kentucky Sophonisba decided it was time for her to congressman. We don’t Sophonisba came of age in a period of support herself. A trip to to visit an know how or when these portraits entered the growing dissonance between the domestic old Wellesley friend in the spring of 1894 archival collection, but their presence ofers female ideal and women’s social reality. ofered Sophonisba an opportunity to do a compelling glimpse into how local and Although women increasingly spurned public service which she had always longed national histories are intertwined. marriage in favor of public service, for. She met with the ’s Sophonisba’s elite Southern background assistant dean of women, Marion Talbott, at In the late 19th century, the Breckinridge name ofered her a more prescribed path. whose suggestion she decided to pursue a was well-known and well-loved. A fxture of Consequently, upon graduation, she felt master’s degree in . When the Kentucky legislature with a foothold in pressure to return to her ailing mother in DC, fnancial troubles forced Sophonisba to return Washington DC, Breckinridge men held a abandoning plans studying law alongside her home to Lexington, she took and passed the national reputation for leadership and gentility. brother. Sophonisba’s dejection led her family bar exam in January 1897, becoming the frst An ally of the family lauded the clan as “the to send her on a Grand Tour through Europe woman in Kentucky to do so. She later earned only aristocracy possible in our country.” with her sister that was cut short by news of a doctorate in political science in 1901 and a Breckinridge children were fed a steady diet their mother’s death on July 14, 1892. J.D. from the University of Chicago’s new law of their family heritage and were instilled with school in 1904. a pressing sense of duty to further the family’s Just months later, the was distinguished legacy. once again shaken to its core as their patriarch Sophonisba spent the rest of her life in was subjected to public scrutiny. Following Chicago, advocating social change through Sophonisba Breckinridge enjoyed a privileged a decade-long afair with the congressman, organizations such as the and and loving childhood in Kentucky, encouraged twenty-seven-year-old Madeleine Pollard the NAACP, and writing treatises on social by her doting father W.C.P., a prominent fled a breach of promise suit against the ffty- welfare that continued to shape public policy for years after her death in 1948. Her father’s trial had served as a catalyzing moment in Sophonisba’s life and career, jarring an increasingly world-weary woman into public service.

Next week, we will look at the parallel life of Madeleine Pollard and her connection to the local Bread Loaf Inn. Pollard’s longstanding afair with the Breckinridge patriarch ofered her some semblance of the advantages into which Sophonisba was born, while relegating her to the annals of notoriety.

Contributed by Taylor Rossini, Archives Assistant at the Henry Sheldon Museum and graduate of Middlebury College in art history. Sophonisba Breckinridge, ink sketch, c. 1900 (left) and Col. W.C.P. Breckinridge, ink sketch, c. 1900 (right).

COLLECTION OF HENRY SHELDON MUSEUM