April 10, 2023
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes about the wedding of Edith Ogden Harrison, a 12th lineal descendant of Pocahontas. Melissa is a genealogist who has a blog, AnceStory Archives, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
On 25 April 1916, society belle Miss Edith Ogden Harrison was joined in matrimony with a Yale man at Holy Name Cathedral in Trenton, New Jersey. The buzz over this event, held on Easter, was not due to Miss Harrison’s social rank – although considered quite posh – but rather, that she was a 12th lineal descendant of the Pocahontas who married John Rolfe on 5 April 1614.
Edith’s wedding announcement had come a month before in the Muskegon Chronicle with the headline “Kin of Pocahontas an Easter Bride.”
The photo caption read:
Miss Edith Ogden Harrison, who like Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the white house bride, is a descendant of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, is to be married at Easter. The groom-to-be is Cyrus Edson Mannier. Miss Harrison is the daughter of Carter H. Harrison, former mayor of Chicago.
The year before Edith married, she was among the most celebrated debutantes of the season. Here is a feature photo from the Jackson Citizen Patriot.
The photo caption read:
Miss Edith Ogden Harrison. With Mrs. Galt [Edith nee Bolling Galt, second wife of Woodrow Wilson] she shares the distinction of tracing her lineage back to Princess Pocahontas. She and her father, Carter H. Harrison, former mayor of Chicago, are among the few living descendants of the beautiful Indian girl of Jamestown.
After her nuptials came the photo feature of the beautiful bride sporting a 100-year-old veil, an heirloom of her groom’s family. The lace train, described as six yards long and six yards wide, graced the heads of former brides in many countries.
Edith’s husband, Cyrus Edson Mannier (1893-1978), was the son of industrialist William Reid Mannier and Julia Orr Edson. The veil may have been worn by the Reid’s of Scotland, from whom his father descended.
Cyrus’ mother came from old Massachusetts stock and some of her ancestors can be traced back to Mayflower passengers Edward Winslow, James Chilton, Francis Cooke, and Hester Maieu.
It would be an understatement to say that our subject Edith Ogden Harrison (1896-1983) had a potent pedigree.
Besides Pocahontas and Rolfe, Edith also descended from Jamestown’s Harrison, Bolling, Randolph, Cabbell, Poythress, Blair, Watson, Hopkins, Archer, Royall, Vaughn, Yeardley, Hamilton, Rose, Kennon, Bennett, Milner, Carter, Worsham, Read, Lewis, Browne, Freeman, Hart, Cary, Ring, Gray, Spencer, and Clarke lines.
Her connection to Pocahontas came from her grandmother Sophonisba Grayson Preston Harrison. Please check back as I will be covering the family tree in more detail in my next “Jamestown Descendants: Who’s Who” series.
From the Jamestown lines she also descended from King Edward I, Hugh le Bigod, Charlemagne, Lady Mary Bolyen and many other royal houses.
I also found Mayflower passenger Governor William Bradford in her family tree. Another interesting ancestor on her maternal side is John Ogden, “The Pilgrim,” from whom Edith’s mother Edith Ogden Harrison, daughter of Roger Nash Ogden and Sarah Beattie, descended. She was kin to the first mayor of Chicago, William Butler Ogden, aka “the Astor of Chicago.”
Several of the Ogden descendants married into the old Virginia families. The genealogy and records can be found in The Ogden family in America, Elizabethtown branch, and their English ancestry; John Ogden, the Pilgrim, and his descendants, 1640-1906.
Edith’s brother, Carter Henry Harrison (1890-1964), married Lucy Brady Cook and their daughter Edith inherited the namesake as noted in the Chicago Daily News.
The photo caption read:
Her Grandmother’s Namesake. Edith Ogden Harrison, the junior Carter Harrison’s second daughter, is now in Lake Forest for a spring reunion. On Monday she returns to the Katharine Gibbs school and in June she will be joining her parents and sisters for a summer in Europe. Her grandmother, for whom she is named, is the senior Mrs. Carter Harrison.
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Note on the header image: the wedding of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, by artist Elmer Boyd Smith, from “The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith,” 1906. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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