Anne Tracy Morgan And Blerancourt

Some fifty miles northeast of Paris, on the Picardy plains, is a restored 17th century chateau originally owned by Salmon de Brosse. Now a remarkable museum that was founded by an American in 1924 - Anne Tracy Morgan. This is her story.
The young Anne Morgan met her two most important friends while organizing New York's Colony Club with Helen Hastings in the winter of 1902-03. The club offered women the social opportunities and athletic facilities that exclusive men’s clubs denied them; Anne's father, banker J.P. Morgan supported her effort. (The National Arts Club, also in New York and founded in 1898, was the only club at the time to admit women and men on an equal basis.)
Elsie de Wolfe, interior decorator, and Elizabeth “Bessie” Marbury, a theatrical agent, were unusual among the Morgan social circle: not only did they work, but they were women who worked. Marbury came from a prominent New York legal family, one of her ancestors was the plaintiff in the 1803 U.S, Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison. Biographers have speculated whether the two women, who lived together, were lovers. After meeting them at Parisian dinner party, Henry Adams described them as “the only men in the lot.”
In 1903 Marbury bought the Villa Trianon at Versailles, abandoned by the French royal family after the Revolution of 1848, so that Elsie could redecorate it. De Wolfe was enchanted by the building's historic connections to Marie Antoinette. Putting an ocean between herself and her domineering father got Anne out of her father’s house and enabled her to pursue her own interests. Soon the women acquired the nickname of "The Versailles Triumvirate".

When World War I commenced, hundreds of American women came to France to join the war effort. Horrified by the carnage she saw at Verdun, Morgan persuaded Henry Ford to donate Model T ambulances and she set up an encampment for the women in the courtyard of the ruined Chateau Blerancourt in 1917. She would finance her Chemin des Dames from her inheritance and with contributions from other Americans.
There Morgan also created the American Committee to asisist the devastated regions. She created a health clinic and mobile library there that still operate today, along with a furniture workshop to provide work and household items for families who had lost their homes during the bombings and a holiday camp for children.

In 1932 Anne Morgan became the first American woman to become a Commander of the French Legion of Honor.

Coming next is the museum's art collection.
Images from the collection of the National Museum of franco-American Cooperation, Blerancourt, France.

Additional information from an article by Rena Pederson of the Dallas Morning News, 2004.