Grace Alekhine

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Grace Alekhine
Full name	Grace Alekhine (née Wishard)
Country	United States  United Kingdom  France
Born	October 26, 1876 (1876-10-26) New Jersey, United States
Died	1956 (aged c. 80) Paris, France

Grace Alekhine (née Wishard, Wishart, Wishaar, Wishar) (26 October 1876 – March 1956), was an American–British–French female chess master, and the fourth and last wife of World Chess Champion Alexander Alekhine.

Born in New Jersey (her parents were Emile Bernard Wishard and Marie Ida Smith), she later married Archibald Freeman, a British tea-planter in Ceylon (he died in the early 1930s), and she retained British citizenship to the end of her life. Grace, the widow of Freeman, had won a minor chess tournament in Tokyo, and played Alexander Alekhine in a simultaneous exhibition at Tokyo 1933. Her prize was one of Alekhine's books. She asked him to sign the book and their relationship developed from that moment.^[1] They were married in March 1934 at Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice, France. The marriage certificate says her maiden name was Wishaar.^[2] She was 16 years older than her husband and wealthy, with a magnificent chateau called Saint-Aubin-le-Cauf, a few miles southwest of Dieppe in Normandy, and an art studio in Paris.

In 1935, she finished outside the top four in the French Championship (Paulette Schwartzmann won) in Paris. In April 1936, she with her husband came to Sofia (Alekhine’s Simultaneous Exhibition).^[3] Both competed at Hastings in 1936/7 when he won the Premier and she won 3rd prize in the 3rd Class Morning A. They both came to Plymouth in 1938 for the Golden Jubilee Congress, where they attended a civic reception in their honour.

During World War II, the Nazis took over their chateau and looted it. She moved to Paris. Alekhine was free to travel, but no exit visa was given to Grace. He was effectively exiled to Portugal while Grace elected to remain in France to monitor the welfare of her various properties at the mercy of the invaders. She even found time to compete in the Paris Championship of 1944 when she became the Ladies Champion.^[4] After World War II, she sold her chateau under American Embassy protection. She spent her final years in her studio in Paris, but visited St. Ives, Cornwall, where she was a member of the local chess club.

She died in Paris, 1956 and was buried next to Alexander in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, to where Alekhine's body had been transferred from Portugal after a long campaign she had led. Her grave spells her maiden name as Wishar.^[5]

After she died, the notes in Alekhine's handwriting were allegedly found in 1956 in her effects to prove he wrote six-part Pariser Zeitung article, entitled Aryan and Jewish Chess, published in March 1941. She was American Jew who lived in France during the Nazi occupation.^[6]

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