Anna (La Chapelle) Clark (1878-1963)

She was born in Calumet, Michigan, to poor French-Canadian parents who emigrated from rural Quebec. In 1894, when she was only fifteen, she was spotted by the "Copper King" William Clark at a Fourth of July parade in Butte, Montana. In 1896, he paid for her to study the harp in Paris, by which time she was already his mistress. In 1900, he took her with him to live at Stewart's Castle in Washington D.C., and they were married the following year at Marseilles in the South of France - he was 62, she was 23. They had two daughters: Andrée, born in Spain, and Huguette, born in Paris.