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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
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Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Europe is broke and America seeks social status. The solution? European nobility marries rich, beautiful American socialites. According to Titled Americans (1915 edition), 454 Gilded Age American heiresses had married into the European aristocracy. Announcements of these transatlantic marriages were pervasive in the newspapers of the day. American influence was carried overseas, with many brides literally changing the face of Europe, by renovating the stately estates of Edwardian England. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| 1874 | Daughter of New York financier, Miss Jeanette ‘Jennie’ Jerome, marries Lord Randolph Spencer Churchill. |
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| 1878 | Miss Mary ‘Minnie’ Stevens, daughter of Mr. Paran Stevens, a popular leader of New York society, marries British General Sir Arthur Henry Fitzroy Paget. For her social skills abroad, she’s deemed ‘the American queen of British society’ and plays the million dollar matchmaker to American girls and British men. |
| 1879 | Nancy Langhorne, Virginia beauty, marries William Waldorf Astor. She later becomes the first woman to take a seat in the British parliament. |
| 1895 | Miss Mary Leiter, the Marshall Field heiress, marries Lord Curzon. He is appointed Viceroy of India three years later, giving Mary the highest position an American woman has ever held in the British empire. |
| 1903 | Miss Mary ‘May’ Goelet, of the prominent Goelet family of New York, marries the Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke of Roxburghe. |
| 1910 | Miss Margaretta Drexel, daughter of Anthony J. Drexel, a well-known Philadelphia banker, marries Guy Montague George Finch-Hatton aka Viscount Maidstone. |
