Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor

Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor (March 7, 1870 – April 5, 1918) was an American sportswoman, bookbinder, suffragist, and socialite, and co-founder of a golf club in Illinois named Onwentsia.

Early life

Rose Farwell was born a twin in Lake Forest, Illinois, the daughter of Charles Benjamin Farwell and Mary Eveline Smith Farwell. Her father was a United States Senator from Illinois. She and her older sisters Anna de Koven and Grace were considered fashionable beauties in Chicago society, and all enjoyed various sports. Anna became a novelist, and married composer Reginald de Koven. Grace became the first president of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rose Farwell attended Ferry Hall and Lake Forest College for her schooling.

Portraits of Rose Farwell as a young woman were painted by John Elliott and Adolfo Müller-Ury.

Career

Because of Rose's and her new husband's interest in golf, the family arranged for Charles B. MacDonald to design a golf course in 1892. In 1895, Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor and her husband were among the founders of the Onwentsia Club, a golf club in Lake Forest. She won several golf events, owned a racehorse, and played lawn tennis. She was a clubwoman, and served as vice president of the Northside Chicago branch of the Illinois Woman Suffrage League.

The Chatfield-Taylors were also members of the "Little Room", a social gathering of artists, writers, and performers. They kept studios in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue, where Rose Chatfield-Taylor ran a bookbinding business called the Rose Bindery, "a shop where appreciated and clothed in beautiful and appropriate bindings." She learned the craft in Paris, and was a member of the Guild of Bookworkers from 1906 to 1910. She wrote about bookbinding for the Sketch Book magazine.

Personal life

Rose Farwell married wealthy writer, social host, and sportsman Hobart Chatfield-Taylor in 1890. They had four children, Adelaide (born in London), Wayne, Otis, and Robert. She died in Santa Barbara in 1918, aged 48 years, from pneumonia after an appendectomy. In her memory, her sisters funded a visiting nurse position in Chicago, beginning in the fall of 1918. Her sister's book, A Cloud of Witnesses (1920), recounts Anna de Koven's efforts to contact the spirit of the late Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor.

Chatfield-Taylor's daughter Adelaide Chatfield-Taylor Whitman Sohier was awarded a Croix de Guerre for her work running a canteen in Boston during World War II. Adelaide's granddaughter is politician and businesswoman Meg Whitman. Her son Wayne Chatfield-Taylor became an economist and served in the United States Department of the Treasury in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.