Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys (married names Suzanne Farnam, Suzanne Stevenson; May 29, 1898 – March 31, 1973) was a Belgian-American sculptor and political activist, founder and first president of the Minute Women of the U.S.A.
Life and career
Suzanne Silvercruys was born in Maaseik, Belgium,[1][2] where her father, Baron Frantz (François) Silvercruys, was a Conseiller (justice) and later president of the Court of Cassation.[3][4][5] The family came to the United States in 1915 in flight from World War I; she became a US citizen in 1922.[6][7] Her brother, Baron Robert Silvercruys [de], was a poet and professor of French and later the Belgian ambassador to Canada and then for many years to the United States.[5]
In 1917, she was one of 1,500 people present at a dinner in Philadelphia where Secretary of War Newton D. Baker was to speak; when he failed to appear, she was invited to speak instead and described the Rape of Belgium by the invading Germans.[4][8] She subsequently toured the US and Canada as "the little Belgian girl", publicizing the Belgians' plight and raising a million dollars for relief to them.[6][9] She received honors from the King and Queen of Belgium,[4][10] including the Order of Leopold[11] and the Order of the Crown; she was also awarded the British Coronation Medal and was an officer of the French Academy.[7]
Silvercruys originally hoped for a career as a musician; she became interested in sculpture when she was ill with tuberculosis and a friend gave her some modeling clay; she sculpted her dog's head.[12][13] She graduated from the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1928[6] and worked as a sculptor, mainly producing portraits of famous people; she also painted portraits.[6] She had a one-person sculpture show in New York in 1930.[10] She also lectured on sculpture, often sculpting one or more members of the audience,[6] and taught the first college class in sculpture at Wichita Falls, Texas.[14] In the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she represented Belgium as a sculptor in the art competition.[15]
In World War II Silvercruys was again active on behalf of Belgian relief.[4][18] After the war she became a prominent anti-Socialist speaker and activist. She was one of the organizers of the Young Republican League of Connecticut and was the founder and president of Minute Women of the U.S.A.;[19][n 1] she left that position in 1952 to co-found the Constitution Party,[6] but soon in turn left the party, disenchanted with her treatment as a foreign-born Catholic and believing it harbored anti-Semites.[20][21] Her political feminism prefigured that of Phyllis Schlafly: she sought to mobilize conservative women in defence of traditional American values, was much influenced by John T. Flynn,[22] and treasured a letter from Senator Joseph McCarthy, which was shown to hesitant Minute Women recruits.[23]
Silvercruys was married twice, to Henry W. Farnam, Jr., son of a Yale professor,[27][28][29] and to Edward Ford Stevenson,[2] who had filmed the Tehran and Yalta conferences during World War II[6] and was later a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve,[19] advertising executive, and producer; he died before her.
^There are varying accounts of whether she was the sole founder of the Minute Women. George Norris Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics: The Primitive Years, 1938–1957, Contributions in Political Science 21, Westport, Connecticut / London: Greenwood, 1979, ISBN9780313205255, p. 123, also presents her as sole founder; however, according to Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, ISBN9780871139849, p. 152, she co-founded the organization with Vivian Kellems.
^ abDon E. Carleton, Red Scare! Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas, Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985, ISBN9780932012906, p. 111.
^Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, ISBN9780871139849, p. 152.
^George Norris Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics: The Primitive Years, 1938–1957, Contributions in Political Science 21, Westport, Connecticut / London: Greenwood, 1979, ISBN9780313205255, p. 123.
