Sophie Radford de Meissner (1854-1957)
Mrs Sophie Adelaide (Radford) de Meissner; Socialite & Spiritualist of Washington DC
She was born at the home of her maternal grandparents on Mount Kemble Avenue in Morristown, New Jersey. The family moved to Washington D.C. at the end of the Civil War where Sophie attended Mme. Burr's School near Fourteenth Street and New York Avenue where only French was spoken, regardless of the subject. In 1869, she went to Europe with her mother and siblings to join her father, Admiral Radford, who was then in command of the European Squadron. They sailed with him through Spain, Portugal, Algiers, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. In 1870, Sophie and her sister were sent to finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, but after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian in the same year her father relinquished his command and they returned home.
In early 1877, Sophie fractured her skull in a horse riding accident and was in a coma for nearly two weeks. Among those who came to wish her good health was Waldemar de Meissner, first Secretary of the Russian Legation. They were married that November in a two day ceremony and their guest list included President Rutherford B. Hayes and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. They first lived at the Radford house, 1726 N Street, near DuPont Circle, but over the next twenty years Meissner's diplomatic career took them to Saint Petersburg, Bern and Lisbon too. In 1896, while visiting their son, Sacha, her husband caught pneumonia in Lisbon and died. Sophie now moved to St. Petersburg to be close to Sacha, accepting a position in the Royal Household as lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress of Russia, Maria Feodorovna. Three years later, Sacha, a young Cornet in the Imperial Russian Cavalry, died of a throat infection. Sophie returned permanently to Washington D.C., living with her mother in Georgetown, except for a brief returns to St. Petersburg, notably in 1905 with the Red Cross during the Russo-Japanese War.
Widowed and childless by the age of 45, Sophie claimed to have made contact with her dead son just twelve hours after his decease. In 1917, Lilian Whiting commented, "she is a woman of purely social life, the life of great embassies and courts, but she has a psychic gift." Sophie's book, There Are No Dead (1912) is a collection of conversations with deceased family, friends and others, and she made the headlines in 1912 when she requested an audience with President William Howard Taft after the sinking of the Titanic. She said she had a message to deliver from one of the victims, Archie Butt, one of Taft's aides and a close personal friend of his too. She also claimed that she had communicated with two more victims of the Titanic, William Thomas Stead and Frank Millet.
She wrote several articles for magazines mainly on her experiences abroad, but she also published six books, notably a biography of her father, Old Naval Days (1920). In addition, she translated the Russian play Ivan the Terrible that was performed on Broadway in 1904, starring Richard Mansfield, and on another trip to St. Petersburg in 1902 she translated the second play of Tolstoy's trilogy, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. She lived to be 103, and on her 100th birthday in Washington she was surrounded by 40 of her friends and family.
In early 1877, Sophie fractured her skull in a horse riding accident and was in a coma for nearly two weeks. Among those who came to wish her good health was Waldemar de Meissner, first Secretary of the Russian Legation. They were married that November in a two day ceremony and their guest list included President Rutherford B. Hayes and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. They first lived at the Radford house, 1726 N Street, near DuPont Circle, but over the next twenty years Meissner's diplomatic career took them to Saint Petersburg, Bern and Lisbon too. In 1896, while visiting their son, Sacha, her husband caught pneumonia in Lisbon and died. Sophie now moved to St. Petersburg to be close to Sacha, accepting a position in the Royal Household as lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress of Russia, Maria Feodorovna. Three years later, Sacha, a young Cornet in the Imperial Russian Cavalry, died of a throat infection. Sophie returned permanently to Washington D.C., living with her mother in Georgetown, except for a brief returns to St. Petersburg, notably in 1905 with the Red Cross during the Russo-Japanese War.
Widowed and childless by the age of 45, Sophie claimed to have made contact with her dead son just twelve hours after his decease. In 1917, Lilian Whiting commented, "she is a woman of purely social life, the life of great embassies and courts, but she has a psychic gift." Sophie's book, There Are No Dead (1912) is a collection of conversations with deceased family, friends and others, and she made the headlines in 1912 when she requested an audience with President William Howard Taft after the sinking of the Titanic. She said she had a message to deliver from one of the victims, Archie Butt, one of Taft's aides and a close personal friend of his too. She also claimed that she had communicated with two more victims of the Titanic, William Thomas Stead and Frank Millet.
She wrote several articles for magazines mainly on her experiences abroad, but she also published six books, notably a biography of her father, Old Naval Days (1920). In addition, she translated the Russian play Ivan the Terrible that was performed on Broadway in 1904, starring Richard Mansfield, and on another trip to St. Petersburg in 1902 she translated the second play of Tolstoy's trilogy, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. She lived to be 103, and on her 100th birthday in Washington she was surrounded by 40 of her friends and family.
