Anne Archbold
American
Lineage
- Father John Dustin Archbold
- Brother: John Foster Archbold
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
| 1873/11/24 | Annie Eliza Mills, wife of John Dustin Archbold, gives birth to a daughter, Anne Mills Archbold, in Titusville, Pennsylvania. | Born | Titusville, PA | Pennsylvania | |||
| 1906/00/00 | Anne Mills Archbold marries Armar Dayrolles Saunderson of Castle Saunderson, County Cavan, Ireland, the son of Edward James Saunderson. | Bride | County Cavan | ||||
| 1924/00/00 | Anne Archbold donates 23.12 acres in Foundry Branch Valley to the District of Columbia as parkland. | Benefactor | Glover-Archbold Park | Washington, DC | |||
| 1925/00/00 | Home from 1925 - 1968 | Home | Hillandale-Main Residence and Gatehouse | Washington, DC | |||
| 1931/00/00 | Anne Archbold buys the Wetzell 3-acre parcel from Wetzell's descendants who still lived at the house. Anne rents the old log house to her niece, Frances Archbold. | Owner | Wetzell-Archbold Farmstead | Washington, DC | |||
| 1947/00/00 | Anne Archbold deeds the Wetzell house and surrounding 1-acre parcel to her daughter, Moira, who will live in the house until her death in 1988. | Owner | Wetzell-Archbold Farmstead | Washington, DC | |||
| 1968/03/26 | Anne Archbold Saunderson dies at 94 in Nassau, New Providence, Commonwealth of The Bahamas. | Died |
History
Anne Archbold was born in 1873 in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Anne was one of two daughters of industrialist John Dustin Archbold, a founder and later president of Standard Oil of New Jersey. As the daughter of a successful oilman, Anne led a charmed life. She spent much of her childhood in Italy and was educated in Florence and Paris. As a young woman, she traveled extensively throughout the world, often with famous artists and authors such as Malvina Hoffman and Gertrude Stein. She was reportedly the first Western woman to enter Tibet. One newspaper article described her as being "a member of the jet set before there were jets."
In 1906, Anne Archbold married Armar D Saunderson of Castle Saunderson, Ireland. The couple gained an avant garde reputation for spending their honeymoon on a safari in eastern Africa. Upon their return, Anne Archbold was requested to recount her experiences to President Theodore Roosevelt so that he could be informed before his upcoming trip to Africa.
Following her divorce in 1922, Anne Archbold moved to Washington. Archbold's social standing and wealth would have enabled her to build a luxurious residence in any of Washington's prestigious neighborhoods. Clearly, Archbold had a specific ideas about the home she wished to provide for her children and the ambience she wanted to create for society. After careful investigation, she purchased over seventy acres of rural land northwest of Georgetown. Her selection of the Italian rural villa style seems to have been a conscious statement to reflect her lifestyle. That Archbold turned to Italy for her stylistic inspiration is not surprising, because of her years of exposure to Italy and her partiality toward Florentine architecture, such as Palazzo Artimino, built by Ferdinand, the sixth Duke of Tuscany. The selection of the Italian villa style might also have been influenced by Anne Archbold's favorite family house in Bar Harbor, Maine modeled after an Italian villa. Supposedly, the ideas for this cottage came from Anne Archbold's travels in Italy. Prior to construction of the Bar Harbor cottage, she had a model of the cottage made in Paris. Anne Archbold retreated to the Bar Harbor residence after separating from her husband. It is here that she decided to build her own villa. Hillandale is an excellent example of a rural villa in the Italian Renaissance style. Moreover, the Italian villa style was less common on the east coast, thus Hillandale is a unique example of this style in Washington, DC.
Anne Archbold was a prominent social figure, sportswoman, and philanthropist before and during her 46-year residency in Washington. As evidence, Archbold, in the 1920s, financed the first occupational therapy unit for and donated psychiatric equipment to Gallinger Hospital in Washington when the city's health services were understaffed. The auditorium at the Gallinger Hospital Nurses Residence was named for Anne Archbold to honor her thirty years of service to the hospital. Apparently, the old Asylum Hospital was the general care facility for the city's residents and "only the generosity of Mrs. Anne Archbold provided the hospital with small occupational therapy and welfare departments". Her work with the Mother's Health Clinic was unprecedented; the clinic was supported by some of the nation's earliest advocates of birth control. In the 1930s, she bred German shepherds which were donated to the Seeing-Eye Institute in Morristown, New Jersey and used Hillandale as the training ground for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department's newly formed K-9 Corps. In 1939, she went to Hong Kong and funded the building of an accurate reproduction of a 15th-century Chinese junk. Thereafter, she headed two expeditions, one to gather plants from the Spice Islands and the other to gather botanical specimens and shells from Melanesia. Archbold was also a part of Washington's early slum- clearance projects. Throughout her life, the local press heralded her efforts: "It's typical of the wealthy daughter of a Standard Oil founder that when she decided to finance a scientific expedition she chose to go along. That's the way she handles philanthropies time and energy go with her money."
Perhaps Anne Archbold's most generous donation and impassioned cause was the Glover-Archbold Park. - NRHP Registration 11 December 1994
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