Person:Elisabeth Mills (1)

Elizabeth Mills Reid was a philanthropist and social activist. She was the daughter of the founder of the Bank of California, D. Ogden Mills, and the wife of newspaper man and American Ambassador to Paris Whitelaw Reid. In 1898 and 1899 she served as Secretary of the Red Cross Society for the Maintenance of Trained Nurses and Chairman, Red Cross Committee on Nursing for the Philippines. In 1915 she served as Chairman of the England chapter of the American Red Cross, London.

Mabel Boardman, a friend, wrote of her:

"Elizabeth Mills Reid is an exceptional woman, a possessor of large wealth and of long years of social and diplomatic experience, especially during the time when her husband, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, was American Minister to France and Ambassador to England. She is a woman gifted with the virtues of simplicity, of sympathy and of loyalty to her ideals and her friends. To any object which commands her interest, she has brought practical business ability and understanding combined with clear vision and whole-hearted devotion. She has given not only of her wealth but of herself to the great causes for which she labored, prominent among which have been the American Red Cross, the hospitals she has built and aided and the public health nursing service she has done so much to support."

On Mrs. Reid's death, then president Herbert Hoover sent a message of condolence to Mrs. Reid's son, Ogden, who was publisher of the New York Herald Tribune: "It was a great shock to both Mrs. Hoover and me to learn this morning of the passing of your mother. She has been so true and loyal a friend and has contributed so much to national welfare in a thousand directions that her death becomes both a personal and a national loss. We wish you and Mrs. Reid to know that you have our deepest sympathy." She left one million dollars to her son. Her papers are in the Library of Congress.

1. ↑ MacColl, Gail, and Carol McD. Wallace. To Marry an English Lord. (New York: Workman Publishing, 1989).