“Who Was Sullivan's Minnie?”

AboutA short biographical research note identifying the real identity of "Minnie," a woman Louis Sullivan describes meeting as a young man and writes of fondly in *The Autobiography of an Idea*, previously misidentified by editors and by biographer Robert Twombly as "Minnie Whittlesey," niece of Sullivan's uncle-by-marriage Walter Whittlesey. Drawing on two 1922 letters from Sullivan to Charles H. Whitaker recently made available, Pettengill establishes that her actual name was Mary Louise "Minnie" Culver of Utica, New York (1851–1922), daughter of grain merchant Abraham Ellis Culver, and shows through genealogical records that she had no family relationship to the Whittleseys at all. The note also questions Sullivan's recollection that Minnie's brother Edward attended Yale, and situates the correspondence as evidence of a decades-long continuing connection between Sullivan and Culver.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28198806%2947%3A2%3C177%3AWWSM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J