Grace (Sedgwick) Bristed (1833-1897)

She is described in the diaries of Caroline Carson, a cousin by marriage of the Bristeds and a resident of Rome: July 30th 1881, "Grace is 'such an uncertain devil' that I don't count on her. She has done the queerest thing about Charley. She put him to a Jesuit College for the Spring in Frascati - that was well enough as she thought he needed to be with boys of his age - and she was busy furnishing her apartment; which this time is a very delightful one in the Piazza del Popolo. But when she was to go to Kissingen last week she consigns Charles to a priest to take down the Naples road and up in to the Abruzzi to stay with his family for a month - and then the priest is to bring him to her! She says she can't afford to take Charles to Kissingen! Having $8,000 a year for his maintenance. Besides, she is sure to have to pay the priest more than Charles going with her could have cost. And a priest's family are just as likely as not to be the veriest peasants - Grace is incomprehensible. She has got an odour of the sacristy about her which is suffocating to all natural growth. And, she has got into such a poor, low set of bigots..." She married her husband in 1867 but after he died in 1874 she divided her time between Rome and Innsbruck. She died in Paris in 1897, survived by her only child (Charles) and one of her two stepchildren by her husband's first marriage.