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Morgan Anne Tracey

Name:
Anne Tracey Morgan
Rank:
Civilian
Serial Number:
Unit:
Date of Death:
1952-01-29
State:
Connecticut
Cemetery:
Cedar Hill Cemetery Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut
Plot:
Sec: 11, Lot: 1
Row:
Grave:
Decoration:
French Croix de Guerre 1914-1918 French Croix de Guerre 1939-1945
Comments:

Born on 25 July 1873 in Highland Falls, NY, to John Pierpont (JP) Morgan and Frances Louisa Tracey. She inherited an immense fortune upon the death of her father in 1913. At the outbreak of WWI, she started to look for ways to help the French population. In April of 1917 she founded The American Committee for Devastated Regions (le Comite Americain pour les Region Devastees), and ran it in France from 1917 - 1921. This formidable organization at its peak employed several hundred people and brought incalculable relief to the French people. She purchased the ruins of the Chateau of Blerancourt and transformed it into a museum of French/American cooperation, which still exists today. She left France in Decemer 1940, but returned after the liberation in June 1945, and once again led war relief efforts. She died in Mount Kisco, NY at the age of 78 on 29 Jan 52. From Find a grave: Anne Tracy Morgan, Humanitarian and Friend of France. Daughter of John Pierpont Morgan and Frances Louise Tracy Morgan. Ms. Morgan championed many progressive causes and cultural activities throughout her life. She helped establish the Colony Club in New York City (the first exclusively women's club in the U.S.), she marched with protestors advocating for factory seamstresses, opened a temperance restaurant in Brooklyn, started a thrift association and vacation fund for young working women, and championed women's suffrage. She is particularly noted for helping France during World War I. She was instrumental in creating the American Fund for French Wounded and opened up her Villa Trianon at Versailles as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. She toured the front lines and helped bring a hospital to the battlefields in France. She branched off from the AFFW with a Civilian Division to provide aid and comfort to the families suffering in the devastated war zones. Because of her aid to French soldiers, General Petain arranged for the Civilian Division of AFFW to move to the Chateau at Blérancourt in 1917 near Soissons. The Civilian Division then became the American Committee for the Devastated Region (CARD in French). Morgan recruited American women to come to France for humanitarian work, and between 1917 and 1924, 350 volunteers arrived. They provided health care, distributed food and clothing, re-opened schools and libraries, and created youth groups for sports and scouting. Often using Ford Model T trucks, these volunteers not only drove their own vehicles, but often worked on them as mechanics. For their work with AFFW and CARD, Morgan and her partner Anne Dike received the Croix d'Officier de la Légion d'Honneur by French General Maréchal Pétain in July 1924. Morgan donated the Chateau at Blérancourt to France and helped found the Franco-American Museum at the site, which continues to celebrate the alliance dating back to the American Revolution between the two countries. During World War II, she created the American Friends of France with its French counterpart, the Comité Americain de Secours Civil, to aid the civilians once again caught in war. After her death in 1952 at the age of 78, she became the first woman and the first American honored with a marble plaque in the Court of Honor at the Hôtel des Invalides near Napoleon's tomb in Paris. Her former home at Sutton Place in New York City was donated to the United Nations and is now the home for its Secretary General.