Ellen Hardin Walworth

Ellen Hardin Walworth's enduring interest in history and education is well reflected in his image of her seated with an open book.

Courtesy: Saratoga Springs History Museum

Ellen Walworth (b. 1832, d. 1915) may well be described as a brilliant woman deeply rooted in history and well ahead of her time.

Her great-grandfather, Lieutenant John D. Hardin, served under Colonel Daniel Morgan at the Battles of Saratoga—making for sad irony that another war claimed her father, John J. Hardin, in 1847 at the Battle of Buena Vista. Four years later, in 1851, her mother, Sarah Ellen Hardin married Reuben Hyde Walworth, the last Chancellor of New York and a Revolutionary War descendant himself. The family moved to Walworth’s home, Pine Grove, in Saratoga Springs, NY. There, her stepfather, at some point brought Ellen to the still-uninterpreted Saratoga Battlefield. It was her first opportunity to walk where her great-grandfather had fought, and she called it “a marked event in my young life.”

In 1852, Ellen married her stepfather’s youngest son, her stepbrother, Mansfield Tracy Walworth. A complex “journey of self” began for her. Nine years later, in 1861, she separated from the unstable and abusive Mansfield. She took their children and moved to Kentucky, and in 1868 moved to Washington, DC. Ellen left Mansfield permanently in 1871 and returned to Saratoga Springs and Pine Grove—left to her by Reuben in his great concern over Mansfield’s years of domestic abuse.

Ellen used Pine Grove to help others, however, opening her home in 1873 as a girls’ school. The year would not remain kind to her, as her son, Frank, enraged by his father’s continued abuse by mail, killed Mansfield in New York City. Though he was imprisoned for the crime, Ellen studied law enough to have him successfully released in 1877.

History’s call still beckoned, and Ellen connected with a like-minded group, the Saratoga Monument Association (SMA). By 1880, the SMA became the only group of its kind with a woman trustee, as SMA President Horatio Seymour petitioned the group to admit Ellen to the role. She then created and chaired the SMA’s “Committee on Tablets” (1883-91) and oversaw the first work to mark formally and interpret Saratoga Battlefield.

Amid this, in 1890 Ellen joined with three other women to create a new organization for women descendants of American War for Independence soldiers: the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Naturally, she then became a co-founder of the Saratoga Springs Chapter of the DAR, and both national and local organizations soon contemplated further helping Saratoga Battlefield.