Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 46013-h.htm or 46013-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46013/46013-h/46013-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46013/46013-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/famousamericanbe00peac FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY [Illustration: Emily Marshall (Mrs. William Foster Otis) From portrait by Chester Harding] FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY by VIRGINIA TATNALL PEACOCK Illustrated [Illustration] Philadelphia & London J. B. Lippincott Company 1901 Copyright, 1900 By J. B. Lippincott Company Electrotyped and Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A. _To My Dear Mother from whom I derived my first conception of all that is most beautiful in woman_ PREFACE During the century now drawing to its close there have appeared in America from time to time women of so pre-eminent a beauty, so dazzling a wit, so powerful a magnetism, that their names belong no less to the history of their country than those of the men whose genius has raised it to the rank it holds to-day among the nations of the earth. Among them have been women of the highest type of mental and moral development, women of great political and of great social genius, all of whom have left the impress of their remarkable personalities upon their time. When they have manifested these qualities in their girlhood they have risen frequently to an eminence such as it is scarcely possible for the women of any other country to attain at a correspondingly early age. From among the latter class the subjects of these sketches have been taken, those having been selected who seemed most adequately to represent their period and locality and whose fame was beyond question, it having been frequently of national and sometimes of international extent. Rising to wield the magic of their influence in every decade of the century and in every section of the country, some study of the time in which each lived has been necessary in order to give her her proper setting and to justly estimate the power she exercised. The inventions and discoveries America has given to the world in this great century have made vast changes in our material condition, which, in turn, have been productive of striking contrasts between the existence of the women who gave life and color to the early years of the century and that of those who reflect the myriad advantages of its closing days.