Florence Jaffray Harriman (1870–1967)

Florence Jaffray Harriman, née Hurst, was born in New York City to shipping magnate Francis William Jones Hurst and his wife Caroline. Her mother died when Florence was three, and she and her two sisters were raised by their father and maternal grandparents. Visitors to their household included John Hay, President James A. Garfield, and President Chester A. Arthur. As a girl, she received private lessons at the home of financier J.P. Morgan and also attended the Misses Lockwood's Collegiate School for Girls. In 1889, at age 19, she married J. (Jefferson) Borden Harriman, a New York banker and cousin of future New York Governor W. Averell Harriman. The couple had one child, Ethel Borden Harriman, who became an actress and writer. For many years, Florence led the life of a young society matron. She was a co-founder of the Colony Club, the first women’s social club in New York, serving as its first president from 1903 to 1916. She was also a leader in the Consumers’ League and other charitable organizations, and served until 1918 on the board of managers of the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford. She helped found the women's welfare committee of the National Civic Federation, and toured the South to report on child-labor conditions. As a result of her campaigning for Woodrow Wilson for president in 1912, she was appointed as the only woman member of the Federal Industrial Relations Commission in 1913–1916. Following the death of her husband in 1914, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she became an influential political hostess. During World War I, she helped organize the Red Cross Motor Corps and was appointed by President Wilson to be chairman of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense. During the Republican administrations from 1921 to 1932, her Georgetown home was a refuge for Democratic society. In 1923, Mrs. Harriman published a lively memoir, From Pinafores to Politics. With the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she again found herself near the center of power. In 1937, Roosevelt appointed her U.S. ambassador to Norway. She was only the second American woman, after Ruth Bryan Rohde, to hold ministerial rank. After the outbreak of World War II, Mrs. Harriman had to cope with the problems of evacuating U.S. nationals from Norway and protecting U.S. national interests there. In 1939, she succeeded in obtaining the release and return of the American freighter City of Flint, which had been captured on the high seas by a German warship and taken into a Norwegian port. With Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway in April 1940, Mrs. Harriman was forced to flee Oslo. She made her way to Sweden, where she arranged for the safety of other Americans and of members of the Norwegian royal family, returning with them to the USA in August. In 1941 she published a record of her service in Norway entitled Mission to the North. In 1942, she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav, the highest honor of Norway. She was a character in the historical drama Atlantic Crossings that aired on PBS in 2020.