{{Short description|American philanthropist}} {{Infobox person | name = Edith Minturn Stokes | image = Edith Minturn Stokes.jpg | image_size = | birth_name = Edith Minturn | birth_date = June 20, 1867 | birth_place = West Brighton, Richmond County, New York (state), U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1937|06|12|1867|06|20}} | death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. | resting_place_coordinates = | spouse = Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (m. 1895) | children = Helen Phelps Stokes (adopted daughter) | parents = Robert Bowne Minturn Jr.<br/>Suzannah Shaw | relatives = Robert Bowne Minturn (paternal grandfather)<br/>Robert Gould Shaw (maternal uncle) <br/>Henry Dwight Sedgwick (brother-in-law)<br/>Amos Pinchot (brother-in-law)<br/>Rosamond Pinchot (niece)<br/>Edie Sedgwick (grand-niece) }}
'''Edith Minturn Stokes''' (June 20, 1867 - June 12, 1937) was an American philanthropist, artistic muse and socialite during the Gilded Age.
==Early life and family background== Edith Minturn was born on June 20, 1867, in West Brighton, Staten Island, New York. She was the third child and second daughter of the 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.<ref name = Love55>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/55 55]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/55}}</ref>
Minturn was educated at home, with music and French lessons, and went on a Grand Tour of Europe, as was expected of society women.<ref name = Love97>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/97 97]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| quote = From the end of Edith’s adolescence on, Susanna [her mother] ruled alone over the four girls and their two brothers. She disallowed all the girls but the youngest, Mildred, from obtaining the higher education that was just then becoming available to privileged women. All the Minturn daughters were expected to be literate, of course, as well as lovely, but that goal was to be accomplished thorough private tutoring and the attentions of their parents.| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/97}}</ref> 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.<ref name = Love299>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/299 299]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/299}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s)/no by-line.--> |date=November 23, 1971 |title=Edie Sedgwick Warhol Star, 28 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/23/archives/edie-sedgwigk-warhol-star-28-lead-in-artists-196566-films-dies-of.html |work=New York Times |location= |access-date=December 8, 2021}}</ref> Her sister Mildred Scott married Arthur Hugh Scott, the headmaster of a French boarding school for boys.<ref name = Love299/> They eventually relocated to England. Her sister Gertrude Minturn married Amos Richard Eno Pinchot.<ref name = Love299/> They had two children, one of whom, Rosamond Pinchot, was an actress famed mostly for her great beauty.<ref name=Lovely>{{Citation | last1 = Gaston| first1 = Bibi| title = The Loveliest Woman in America: A Memoir| publisher = Harper Perennial| place = New York| year = 2009}}</ref>
==Philanthropy and artistic muse== [[File:Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes MET DT1225.jpg|thumb|left|upright|''Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes'', by John Singer Sargent, 1897)]] She was the President of the New York Kindergarten Association,<ref name=NYTdeath/> ran a sewing school for immigrant women, and was a benefactor of St. George's Church in New York City.
[[File:Looking West From Peristyle, Court of Honor and Grand Basin, 1893.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Daniel Chester French's original statue ''The Republic'' at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago]]
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 atelier.<ref name = Love110>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/110 110]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/110}}</ref>
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 {{convert|65|ft|m|adj=mid|-high}} plaster statue covered in gold leaf, and with an illuminated crown. The sculpture was decommissioned and deliberately destroyed in 1896 and the sculptor was commissioned to produce a smaller version, the Statue of the Republic, a {{convert|24|ft|m|adj=mid|-tall}} gilded bronze sculpture that was erected in 1918 and still stands.<ref name=Ghost>{{Citation| last = Morrone| first = Francis| year = 1997| title = The Ghost of Monsieur Stokes| journal = City Journal| publisher = The Manhattan Institute| publication-place = New York| issue = August| url = http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_4_urbanities-the_ghost.html| access-date = 2 August 2015| archive-date = 3 March 2016| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303205804/http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_4_urbanities-the_ghost.html| url-status = dead}}</ref>
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.<ref name = NYHS>{{cite web |url= http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/edith-minturn-ca-1869-1937|title= Edith Minturn (ca. 1869-1937)|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |website= New-York Historical Society Museum & Library|publisher= New-York Historical Society |access-date= 2 August 2015}}</ref>
John Singer Sargent’s portrait ''Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes'' is on display in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<ref name=Ghost/><ref name=NYTSargent>{{Citation | last = Heyman| first = Stephen| title = The Haves Who Gave| newspaper = The New York Times Magazine| publication-place = New York, New York | date = 23 March 2012 | url = http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/the-haves-who-gave/?_r=0 |access-date= 2 August 2015}}</ref>
==Personal life== On 25 August 1895, at Pointe-á-Pic, Quebec, she married Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867-1944).<ref name=NYTwedding>{{Citation | title = Marriage of Miss Edith Minturn| newspaper = The New York Times| publication-place = New York, New York | date = 22 August 1895 | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1895/08/22/103370053.pdf|access-date= 2 August 2015}}</ref>
The couple had no biological children, but in 1908 adopted a 3 year old girl, 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.<ref name = Love337>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/337 337]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/337}}</ref> Helen married twice, first in 1928 to Edwin Katte Merrill, a lumber speculator from Bangor, Maine, and had two daughters and two sons. Her second husband was Donald Bush. Helen died in 2004.<ref name = Love503>{{Citation| last1 = Zimmerman| first1 = Jean| title = Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| place = Boston/New York| year = 2012| page = [https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/503 503]| ISBN = 978-0-15-101447-7| url = https://archive.org/details/lovefiercelygild0000zimm/page/503}}</ref>
Edith suffered from a series of strokes in late life, and died on June 12, 1937, in her home at 953 Fifth Avenue, New York City.<ref name=NYTdeath>{{Citation | title = Mrs. I. N. P. Stokes Dies at Her Home| newspaper = The New York Times| publication-place = New York, New York | date = 13 June 1937| url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/06/13/94388281.pdf|access-date= 2 August 2015 }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Minturn Stokes, Edith}} Category:1867 births Category:1937 deaths Category:People from West New Brighton, Staten Island Category:People from the Upper East Side Category:Philanthropists from New York (state) Category:American socialites Category:Muses (persons) Category:Sedgwick family Category:Winthrop family