Ellen Hardin Walworth
Educator, Lawyer, Historian, Author, Civic Leader
Ellen Hardin was born in 1832 in Jacksonville, Illinois. Four years after her father, Col. John Hardin, died at the Battle of Buena Vista in the war with Mexico, her mother married N.Y. Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth. The family moved to his home in Saratoga Springs. Eighteen-year-old Ellen was quickly attracted to Reuben’s son Mansfield Tracy Walworth, and married him in 1852.
Living at Pine Grove, the Walworth home at 525 Broadway, Ellen and Mansfield had six children, two of whom died in infancy. But Mansfield turned out to be a violent husband, inflicting increasingly brutal verbal and physical abuse on Ellen. Injured by Mansfield during her last pregnancy, she obtained a permanent separation in 1871. She moved to Kentucky, then Washington D.C., then returned to Saratoga Springs. In 1873 her son Frank, enraged by his father’s continuing threats, shot and killed Mansfield in New York City.
Ellen Hardin Walworth proved to be a resourceful woman. She started a school at Pine Grove. She became active in local, state and national public affairs and earned a law degree from NYU, with expertise in parliamentary law. Continuing her interest in history, Ellen was one of the founders of the Saratoga Springs Historical Society in 1883. She was a co-founder of the national Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). After Ellen died in 1915, granddaughter Clara Grant Walworth lived at Pine Grove until her death in 1952. The house was in such poor condition that it had to be taken down, but its furnishings are installed on the third floor of the History Museum.