Florence Jaffray Harriman

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Florence Harriman
Florence Jaffray Harriman
In office
1937 – 1940
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr.
Succeeded by Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr.
Born July 21, 1870(1870-07-21)
New York City, New York
Died August 31, 1967 (aged 97)
Washington, D.C.
Political party Democratic
Spouse J. Borden Harriman
Profession Suffragist and social reformer

Florence Jaffray "Daisy" Harriman (July 21, 1870 – August 31, 1967) was an American socialite, suffragist, social reformer, organizer, and later, a courageous diplomat. “She led one of the suffrage parades down Fifth Avenue, worked on campaigns on child labor and safe milk and, as minister to Norway in World War II, organized evacuation efforts while hiding in a forest from the Nazi invasion.”[1] In her ninety-second year, U.S. President John F. Kennedy honored her by awarding her the first “Citation of Merit for Distinguished Service.”[2]

Contents

[edit] Child and wife of privilege

Ms. Harriman was born Florence Jaffray Hurst on July 21, 1870 in New York City, New York to shipping magnate F.W.J. Hurst and his wife Caroline.[3] Her mother died when she was three years old, and she was raised in and around New York City by her father and maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Somerville Jaffray. [4] She was known throughout her life as “Daisy.” Between 1880 and 1888, she received private lessons at the home of J. P. Morgan. [5] In 1889, at age nineteen, she married J. Borden Harriman, a New York banker (and an elder cousin of future cabinet secretary, New York Governor and diplomat W. Averell Harriman).[6] They had one child, Ethel M.B. Harriman, born in 1897 or 1898. Ethel worked on Broadway and in Hollywood, as an actress and writer (as Ethel Russell or Ethel Borden).[7]

[edit] Socialite

For many years, Ms. Harriman led the life of a young society matron interested in charitable and civic activities.[8]

In 1903, she co-founded (with Ava Lowle Willing (then Mrs. John Jacob Astor IV), and Helen Hay (Mrs. Payne Whitney)) the Colony Club, New York City’s first club exclusively for women. [9] However, instead of restricting her social and civic activities to the wealthy or to members of her husband’s political party (the Republican Party), she reached out to others. For example, in 1909 she created waves when, as the “wife of a banker,” she “entertained one hundred members of the International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen at her summer home.” [10] In 1906, Republican Governor Charles Evans Hughes appointed her as a member of the Board of Managers of New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford, New York.[5]

[edit] Suffragist and social reformer

Daisy Harriman addresses a Democratic rally in Union Square, New York City
Daisy Harriman addresses a Democratic rally in Union Square, New York City

As Ms. Harriman would later explain in her book “From Pinafores to Politics,” her leadership and organizing skills became increasingly directed toward the disenfranchised and impoverished.[11] She was active in the women’s suffrage movement in support of extending the vote to women, reportedly leading a parade of suffragists down Fifth Avenue in New York City.[12]

In 1912, Ms. Harriman’s active support for the presidential campaign of then-New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson led to national publicity and leadership roles. She was elected as the first president of the “Women’s National Wilson and Marshall Association,” and organized mass meetings, and mass mailings, in support of his campaign.[13]

Upon taking office, Wilson appointed Harriman as a member of the first U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, which Congress had authorized the previous year. After 154 days of testimony, the Commission could not agree on the causes and solutions to labor-management difficulties. Harriman and Commissioner John R. Commons refused to sign the caustic majority report written by Frank P. Walsh. As Commons and Harriman wrote in their separate minority report, the majority report mistakenly focused individual “scapegoats’ rather than on the system that produces the demand for scapegoats.[14]

[edit] World War I

Heading the Washington Ambulance Corps in a Red Cross parade
Heading the Washington Ambulance Corps in a Red Cross parade

In 1914, Harriman’s husband died from natural causes,[15] and World War I broke out in Europe. Ms. Harriman never remarried, but moved to Washington D.C. and increased her charitable and political activity. During the period of American neutrality, she became a cofounder of the Committee of Mercy, which was created to help the women and children and other noncombatants made destitute by the war.[16] After the United States declared war on Germany, she organized the American Red Cross Women's Motor Corps of the District of Columbia, and directed the Women's Motor Corps in France.[5] From 1917 to 1919, she served as chair of the U.S. National Defense Advisory Commission's Committee on Women in Industry.[5]

[edit] 1919 to 1937

Ms. Harriman participated in the Versailles Peace Conference, and upon her return was an advocate for American participation in the League of Nations, and worked on behalf of world peace organizations.[5]

While the Wilson Administration ended in 1921, Harriman’s Democratic activism did not. She began serving as member of the Democratic National Committee in 1920 (a position she would hold until the 1950s) and in 1922 became the founder and first president of the Woman's National Democratic Club.[5] Her first book, “From Pinafores to Politics,” was published in 1923. She resided in a large home known as "Uplands," on a hill off Foxhall Road northwest of Georgetown.[17] Time Magazine would report in 1934 that her “Sunday night salons have long been a Washington institution.”[6]

Harriman reportedly “lost most of her fortune during the Depression,” and “had to eke out her income by interior decorating and real estate” (while sharing her Washington home to well-paying guests). [18] One such cohabitant in the first year of the Roosevelt Administration was the first woman cabinet member, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.[17]

As a member of the Democratic National Committee, Harriman was also a District of Columbia delegate to the Party’s conventions. In 1932, when the Convention nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harriman did not support him. According to Time, she “she unfortunately held out for Newton D. Baker or Melvin Traylor.”[18] In her own words, this would cause the "the triumphant members of the Roosevelt-before-the-Convention inner clique" to have "a little grey mark against me."[17] However, “after Roosevelt's nomination she hastened to repair her mistake,” and became one of Roosevelt’s strongest supporters at the 1936 Convention. [18]

[edit] Diplomacy and World War II

Early in his second term, Roosevelt scrambled many of his diplomatic assignments. [18] Norway, the fourth nation to grant woman suffrage (after New Zealand, Australia and Finland), was considered "an obvious post for a woman diplomat." [18] Thus, in 1937, she was appointed as the United States’ Minister to Norway. [5] (Her precise title was “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary” for Norway.)[19] At the time of her appointment, she could hardly have known that this role would soon require her to draw on her experience in helping refugees in the previous World War.

In 1940, Germany invaded Norway with little warning, causing Minister Harriman and the rest of the American legation in Norway to join certain members of the Norwegian royal family and other refugees seeking protection hundreds of kilometers away in Sweden.[20] In the chaos and bombardment, America suffered its first military casualty when Captain Robert M. Losey, a U.S. military attaché assisting the evacuation while observing the war, was killed in a Luftwaffe attack on Dombås.[20] The rest of the American legation ultimately arrived safely in Sweden. Harriman is credited with arranged for the safety of other Americans and several members of the Norwegian royal family -- Crown Princess Märtha and her children Ragnhild, Astrid and Harald.[5][21] She returned to the Nordic countries to complete the evacuation of current and future U.S. citizens through Finland on the troopship USS American Legion in August 1940.[22] Her service in Norway, and the harrowing escape, became the subject of her next book, “Mission to the North,” published in 1941. [23]

After the United States entered World War II, Harriman continued to write on causes important to her, and wrote a portion of one of the first publications on the Holocaust, “Auschwitz, Camp of Death,” published in 1944 soon after its liberation by Soviet troops.[24] And despite her decades of involvement in the Democratic Party, she joined a bipartisan (but unsuccessful) effort to persuade Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in the 1940 election, Wendell Willkie, to run for Governor of New York in 1942. [25]

In 1952, she campaigned on behalf of her cousin by marriage, W. Averell Harriman, in his unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for President. [26]

[edit] The Certificate of Merit

Ms. Harriman received a Citation of Merit for Distinguished Service, presented by President Kennedy on April 18, 1963 (when Harriman was 92 years old). It states: “In her illustrious career in public service, Mrs. Harriman has made singular and lasting contributions to the cause of peace and freedom. . . . In all of her endeavors, Mrs. Harriman has exemplified the spirit of selflessness, courage and service to the Nation, reflecting the highest credit on herself and on this country. She has, indeed, earned the esteem and admiration of her countrymen and the enduring gratitude of this Republic.” [2] She has stated that “I think nobody can deny that I have always had through sheer luck. . . a box seat at the America of my times.”[27]

Ms. Harriman died in Washington, D.C., on August 31, 1967. [5] Her daughter died on July 4, 1954, at age 55. [28] A granddaughter, Phyllis Russell Marcy Darling, of Eugene, Oregon, died on December 18, 2007, at age 88. [29]

[edit] Published Works

  • Harriman, Florence Jaffray Hurst, Examples of Welfare Work in the Cotton Industry: Conditions and Progress : New England and the South New York: Woman's Dept., National Civic Federation (1910)
  • Harriman, Mrs. J. Borden, From Pinafores to Politics, New York: H. Holt and Company (1923)
  • Harriman, Florence Jaffray, Mission to the North Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott (1941)
  • Harriman, Florence Jaffray Hurst, Norway Does Not Yield; The Story of the First Year New York: American Friends of German Freedom (1941)
  • Zarembina, Natalia, and Florence Jaffray Hurst Harriman, Oswiecim, Camp of Death (Underground Report) New York, N.Y.: "Poland fights," Polish Labor Group (1944)
  • Harriman, Florence Jaffray Hurst, The Reminiscences of Mrs. Florence Jaffray Harriman (1972)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Christopher Gray, “New York Streetscapes: Former Colony Club at 120 Madison Avenue,” The New York Times, 2003-09-28.
  2. ^ a b ”The American Presidency Project."
  3. ^ “Brides And Grooms: The Wedding Of Miss Hurst And Mr. Harriman At St. Thomas's,” The New York Times, 1889-11-14, at 2.
  4. ^ Judith A. Leavitt, “American Women Managers and Administrators: A Selective Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Leaders in Business, Education, and Government,” 102-03 (1985).
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i “Florence Jaffray Hurst Harriman: A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress,” Library of Congress 2002.
  6. ^ a b “New Harriman Deal,” Time, 1934-01-22.
  7. ^ Broadway Database entry for Ethel Borden and Movie Database entry for Ethel Borden.
  8. ^ ”Florence J. Harriman,” Encyclopedia Britannica, referenced 2008-03-01.
  9. ^ James Trager, "Park Avenue, Street of Dreams" (Athenaeum 1990).
  10. ^ “Banker’s Wife Dines Labor Delegates,” The New York Times, 1909-08-19.
  11. ^ Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, “From Pinafores to Politics,” (Henry Holt & Co., 1923) ASIN B00085GSYO.
  12. ^ “‘Enter Politics:’ Mrs. J. Borden Harriman’s Message to American Women.” New York Herald, 1912-08-12, p. 2.
  13. ^ Jo Freeman, "The Rise of Political Woman in the Election of 1912" (2003).
  14. ^ Bruce Kaufman, The Global Evolution of Industrial Relations: 86 (2004) ISBN 9221141535.
  15. ^ "J Borden Harriman Dying in Mt. Kisco," The New York Times, 1914-10-08.
  16. ^ Ida Clyde Clarke, “American Women and the World War,” (D. Appleton & Co. 1918).
  17. ^ a b c "Florence Jaffray Harriman, "Mission to the North," at 14-18 (Lippincott 1941).
  18. ^ a b c d e ”To Oslo,” Time, 1937-04-12.
  19. ^ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/11435.htm.
  20. ^ a b J. Michael Cleverley, "'The First American Official Killed In This War,'" Foreign Service Journal, December 2003 at 66; “Daisy Harriman Outruns Bombs,” Life, 1940-05-14.
  21. ^ Norway.org - the official site in the United States: A New Princess in Town, 9/28/2005
  22. ^ " SS American Legion," in Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
  23. ^ Florence Harriman, “Mission to the North" (J.D. Lippincott Co., 1941) ISBN 9781135463243.
  24. ^ A copy of the publication appears in those archives in the Polish Embassy to the United States that are available at the Polish Institute of Arts and Scientists of America, http://www.piasa.org/archives/pin012a.html.
  25. ^ Ellsworth Barnard, “Wendell Willkie: Fighter for Freedom” 330-31 (U. Mass. Press 1971) ISBN 0870230883.
  26. ^ ”Talking it Over: Pre-Convention Differences Bring Family Opinions to Attention,” Syracuse Herald-Journal, 1952-06-19 at 40.
  27. ^ ”Crusader for Rights; Florence Jaffray Harriman,” The New York Times, 1963-04-19.
  28. ^ http://www.media-imdb.com/name/nm0096129/bio.
  29. ^ Obituary of Phyllis Darling, Eugene Register-Guard, 2008-01-07.