Isabel Stevens Lathrop

Isabel Stevens Harris Lathrop (1868 – October 26, 1964) was an American singer. She was made a member of the French Legion of Honor for her hospital and reconstruction work in Paris during and after World War I.

Isabel Stevens Lathrop, from a 1919 publication.

Early life

Isabel Stevens Harris was born in California, the daughter of Elias B. Harris and Anna Isabella Stevens Harris. Her father was a Navy surgeon. Her mother was a member of the Stevens family of Hoboken, New Jersey,[1] founders of the Stevens Institute of Technology.[2]

She studied music in New York City, in Belgium, and as a student of Jean de Reszke in Paris.[3]

Career

Lathrop worked in the settlement movement and was interested in music education. Lathrop wrote Musical Dates for Little Pates (1912), which was describes as "funny jingles and rhymes" for teaching the alphabet.[4] She also gave performances as a concert soprano, debuting in 1908 at the Colony Club in New York City.[5]

During World War I, Lathrop was a founder and president of the American Fund for French Wounded in 1914, and chaired the organization's Paris depot, which was housed in a former music hall. Botanist Anna Murray Vail was the treasurer at the Paris depot.[6] Her written request to the American Red Cross for supplies in 1916 was reprinted in the New York Times: "We have never had such demands on us for cotton and bandages &c. The fighting at Verdun has been so fierce and so persistent we have had a veritable house cleaning."[7] Her 1918 cables home were reprinted in the Chicago Tribune[8] and other newspapers.[9] She worked with the Horticultural Society of New York to distribute their "French Fruit Tree Fund", to fund the planting of new trees in the region around Verdun after the war.[10] She also helped to found the American Memorial Hospital at Rheims,[11][12] dedicated in 1922,[13] and raised funds for the building of another hospital at Toul.[14] Upon returning to the United States, she gave lectures about her experiences in France.[15]

Personal life

Isabel Stevens Harris married Benjamin Girault Lathrop. They had three daughters, Isabel, Sylvia, and Elsie.[16] Isabel Stevens Lathrop died in 1964, aged 96 years, at a nursing home in Huntington, New York.[14]

Letters written by Isabel Stevens Lathrop to a donor during her Paris work are in the American Fund for French Wounded collection, Yale University Library.[17]

References
  1. "Harris", Obituary notices, San Francisco Call (July 19, 1908): 39.
  2. "Mrs. Elsie Stevens to Wed in England" New York Times (October 12, 1925): 1.
  3. John William Leonard, ed., Woman's Who's Who of America (American Commonwealth Company 1914): 476.
  4. "For the Little Tots" Continent (November 28, 1912): 1700.
  5. "Mrs. Lathrop's Debut" New York Times (April 8, 1908): 7.
  6. The American Fund for French Wounded records, Archives and Manuscripts, New York Public Library.
  7. "Need Cotton in France" New York Times (July 17, 1916): 11. via Newspapers.comopen access
  8. "Women in Wartime" Chicago Daily Tribune (April 2, 1918): 15.
  9. "Letter from Red Cross Worker" Wilkes-Barre Record (July 9, 1918): 6. via Newspapers.comopen access
  10. "French Fruit Tree Fund of the Horticultural Society of New York" Journal of the Horticultural Society of New York (February 1918): 243-247.
  11. Charlotte Holmes Crawford, "Sick and Ye Visited Me: American Memorial Hospital at Reims" The New France (August 1919): 638-640.
  12. William Peters, American Memorial Hospital, Reims, France: A History (American Memorial Hospital 1955).
  13. "Dedicates U. S. Gift to France" Detroit Free Press (May 22, 1922): 10. via Newspapers.comopen access
  14. "Mrs. Benjamin Lathrop Dies; Won Legion of Honor in 1919" New York Times (October 28, 1964): 45.
  15. "A Close View of Great War for Wichita" Wichita Beacon (May 17, 1919): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  16. "Long Island Society in Town" Brooklyn Life and Activities of Long Island Society (March 20, 1926): 16. via Newspapers.comopen access
  17. American Fund for French Wounded collection, Yale University Library.
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