Elizabeth Lawrence / Women’s History Month. Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence (1829-1905), was born in Doylestown, the daughter of Judge Henry Chapman. She attended one of the city’s female academies, where her social contacts included members of Philadelphia society, and in 1854 married Timothy Bigelow Lawrence, the immensely wealthy son of a New England textile family. Lawrence was in the diplomatic corps; and the couple lived in England and then in Italy for 15 years.
“E.L.,” as she signed her correspondence, was once described as “the most popular American woman there was in England.” Her husband’s position led to her presentation to the queen and acquaintance with statesmen, authors and artists of the day, on whom she left a very positive impression. Her address book read like a social register of important people: James Buchanan, Gen. George McClellan, James G. Blaine, Benjamin Disraeli, Princess Mary of Cambridge (granddaughter to George III) and her mother the Duchess of Cambridge, Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, Thomas Carlyle, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Henry James and so on.
Upon her husband’s sudden death in 1869, E.L. returned to Doylestown to build a family home (named Aldie) for her retired father and her sister Mary’s family, staying there herself for months at a time. The succeeding years also took her to Washington DC, where she took on the social limelight much in the way she had done abroad.
Her sister’s two young sons, William and Henry, called her “Auntie Lela.” Henry became the favored brother, and she paid for his education at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania as well as his trips abroad. She contributed the seed money to build what was to become the Mercer Museum, and when she died in 1905 she left the bulk of her estate to Henry who used it to build his home at Fonthill.
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