Mount Holyoke College
Archives and Special Collections
Manuscript Register
Jerome Family.
Jerome Papers. ca. 1824-1956

Manuscript Collection: MS 0762

2 boxes

Agency History/Biographical note:
Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome was born December 18, 1824 in New Haven, Connecticut, lived her entire life in Connecticut, and died on April 22, 1910 at the age of eighty-six. Her parents were Hezekiah Gilbert and Rebecca Driggs Gilbert. She studied painting with Emanuel Leutze and became a well-known portrait artist in Hartford during the 1860s and 1870s. She married Nelson Benjamin Jerome on December 8, 1858. They had two daughters before separating in 1887, when she moved back to her family home in New Haven. One daughter, named Jane Gilbert Jerome but known as Jennie G. in her family, was born in Hartford on March 14, 1861. She studied at Hartford Female Seminary in the 1870s and died at the age of twenty-one on May 9, 1887. Her sister, Elizabeth Maude Jerome, was born on November 21, 1864 in Hartford and also attended Hartford Female Seminary in the 1870s. She married Yuan Phou Lee, a Yale-educated scholar and lecturer from Canton, China, on July 6, 1887. They had two children, Jennie Gilbert Jerome and Amos Gilbert Nelson Jerome. She divorced Lee shortly after their son's birth and raised the children with her mother in New Haven. She died on January 10, 1939 at the age of seventy-four. Her son, known as Gilbert Nelson Jerome in his family, was born on November 15, 1889 in New Haven. He graduated with honors from New Haven High School in 1907 and received a Ph.B. in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1910. He also received a Bachelor of Humanics degree from the International YMCA College in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1914. He was involved with the Boy Scouts of America and became the first Scout Executive of that organization in New Haven in 1915. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he volunteered and trained as a pilot. In February 1918 he was commissioned as First Lieutenant, Aviation Section, Signal Officers Reserve Corps and sent for training in Paris, France. He flew a Spad 90 for the 8th French Army and was killed by anti-aircraft fire near Blamont, France on July 11, 1918. He was buried in the German military cemetery near Blamont. His remains were moved to an American military cemetery in Argonne in 1919 then, in 1921, reburied in New Haven. His mother gave a stained glass window in his memory, made by Tiffany and Company, to the Plymouth Congregational Church in New Haven.

Scope and Content:
The Jerome Family Papers consist of a scrapbook, an autograph album, a commonplace book, a spelling book, course records, and school catalogue, biographical and genealogical information, and photographs. The individuals represented are relatives of Jennie Gilbert Jerome (1888-1979), a 1911 graduate of Mount Holyoke College. The material relates to her grandmother, Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome (1824-1910); her aunt, Jennie G. Jerome (1861-1887); her mother, Elizabeth Maude Jerome (1864-1939); and her brother, Gilbert Nelson Jerome (1889-1918). Much of the collection consists of items dating from 1914-1922 and 1956 that relate to her brother. This material includes a tribute entitled "In Memory of Yale's Dead in the War" and a published biography of him written by his mother. There are also photographs and a photograph album concerning his military service and death in World War I. These images include photographs of him in uniform with his airplane, of his funeral and burial sites in France and Connecticut and of the memorial stone and Tiffany window commissioned in his honor. Also included are pages about him from the International YMCA College (Springfield, Massachusetts) yearbook of 1914. Material for his mother, Elizabeth Maude Jerome, consists of a scrapbook of small highly-colored and embossed die-cut chromolithographs compiled in about 1876, an autograph album dating from about 1877-1881 that includes signatures of Hartford Female Seminary classmates and teachers, a letter from the 1920s requesting genealogical information, and her obituary. Material for her sister Jennie G. Jerome consists of items dating from 1873-1879 when she, too, attended Hartford Female Seminary. This material includes a published "Spelling-Book for Advanced Classes" by William T. Adams, 1873, her notes for her studies, and a school catalogue for 1878-1879. Material for their mother Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome consists of a commonplace book from 1850-ca. 1870 that contains "Prose and Poetry, And Gems from late Readings." Jerome family material consists of a poem written for a relative in 1848 and information about both Gilbert and Jerome family members as recorded in the pages of a Bible between ca. 1824-1939. The collection also includes a photograph of Elizabeth Maude Jerome, possibly from the 1920s, and two photograph albums dating from the 1860s to about 1900 that contain images of members of the Gilbert and Jerome families and carte-de-visite photographs of well-known individuals including United States presidents and generals and American and English authors.

Cite as: Jerome Family Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, MA.

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

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