Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst papers, 1887-19781887-1926
Collection Number: 3725

Related collection:Willard Dickerman Straight. Papers, #1260.

Related collection:Dorothy Whitney Straight. Papers from Dartington Hall, #3782.

Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst papers, #3725. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

Philanthropist, educator, publisher, patron of the arts and social activist. Dorothy Payne Whitney, daughter of William C. Whitney, a financier and secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland, married Willard Dickerman Straight in 1911. Straight died in 1919, and she married Leonard Knight Elmhirst in 1925. Dorothy and Elmhirst purchased Dartington Hall, Devon, England, reconstructed the 14th century manor and founded a school on the property. Dartington Hall became a center for the arts and a leading coeducational progressive school. The New School for Social Research in New York was begun with the backing of the Whitney Estate in 1919. Dorothy was involved with the New York State Food Commission, the Womens Liberty Loan Committee, the Social Unit Plan, the Junior League, the War Camp Service Committee, the Womens Emergency Committee of the European Relief Council, the New School for Social Research, the Tuberculosis Preventorium for Children, the Pueblos Defense Committee, and the Mayors Committee of Women on National Defense. She supported individual students at the Bordentown Military Academy and Hobart College, and helped to found The New Republic.

Includes both sides of Dorothy's correspondence with Willard D. Straight, whom she married in 1911, dealing with their courtship, and with World War I while he was stationed in France, 1917-1918; letters from friends concerning social engagements and activities in New York State and Washington, D.C.; letters from her brothers, her sister-in-law Gertrude V. Whitney, and various nieces and nephews. Also notebooks from her school days, guardianship papers, newspaper clippings concerning her father's death, guest books and photographs documenting her early life; correspondence, newspaper clippings, and certificates documenting her civic activities; inventory (l volume) and miscellany concerning the house at 1130 Fifth Avenue; communications concerning Willard D. Straight's death and funeral arrangements in Paris, his will and photographs; correspondence about the building of Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University, and correspondence and statements concerning THE NEW REPUBLIC and ASIA magazines. Major correspondents include Beatrice Bend (later Mrs. Henry Prather Fletcher), Katharine L. Barney (later Mrs. Courtlandt D. Barnes), Maurice Casenave, Herbert and Louise Croly, James Curtis, Henry P. Davison, William A. Delano, Richard Derby, Margaret (Myra) G. Dix (later Mrs. Charles Lawrance), Martin Egan, Alfred W. Fiedler, Henry Prather Fletcher, Florence (Daisy) Jaffray Harriman, Louise (Tottie) R. Knowlton (later Mrs. Buell Hollister), and George D. Marvin.

Also, William and Caroline D. Phillips, Ethel C. Roosevelt (later Mrs. Richard Derby), Susan R. Sedgwick (widow of Arthur Swann, later Mrs. Paul L. Hammond), Hazel Straight (later Mrs. James Forest Sanborn), Eliza Morgan Swift, May Tuckerman (later Mrs. Hermann Kinnicutt), Pauline P. Whitney (later Mrs. Almeric H. Paget), Anna L.B. Williams, and Gladys M. Vanderbilt (later Countess Szechenyi), A. Piatt Andrew, J. Howland Auchincloss, Robert and Martha W. Bacon and their son Robert Low Bacon, Frances P.B. Bolton, William J. Calhoun, Wilbur R. Chenoweth, Winston Churchill, Ellen Straight Cross, Richard Harding Davis, Charles D. Draper, Lord Charles French, John Foord, Mary Harriman (later Mrs. Charles C. Rumsey), Herbert C. Hoover, Colonel Edward M. House, Delancey K. Jay, Walter Lippmann, Charles Merz, Ruth Morgan, Annah D. Ripley (later Countess de Viel Castel), Alice L. Roosevelt (later Mrs. Nicholas Longworth), Corinne Roosevelt (later Mrs. Douglas Robinson), Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Lillian Wald, Lloyd Warren, William Fitz Hugh (Sheldon) Whitehouse, and Stark Young.

Also one leather-bound writing set containing paper, pencil, and pen; marked in gold letters: "D. W. June 1910" (Dorothy Whitney).

Access to the "Honeymoon scrapbook" in Box 9 restricted to the permission of the curator.

Edward C. Carter letter may not be reproduced.