Elizabeth (Chapman) Lawrence (1829-1905)

She travelled widely after inheriting $1-million from her late husband, Col. T. Bigelow Lawrence, U.S. Consul-General to Italy. On her travels she met several of the most famous people of her age including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Gen. George McClellan, Alexander Dumas, and Henry Adams. Adams is believed to have used her as the basis of his heroine in his book Democracy, published in 1880 and still in print today. She was also involved in the founding of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She died without children in Boston and her inheritance to her nephew, Henry Chapman Mercer, allowed him to build the fantastical "Fonthill Castle" as well as what is now termed "the Mercer Mile" in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.