by Laura Cortner, Director
A historical detective story has been playing out at the Ruscombe Mansion! It’s our own version of the PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” and we just uncovered the document we needed to verify who was the original owner of our Mansion.
We knew all along we were on land originally carved out of the James Woods Tyson estate (related to Cylburn), but we had erroneously concluded the original owner of our Mansion building was one of James Woods Tyson’s daughters. What we discovered recently was far more exciting! There is a lot of history in these walls, and the Ruscombe Community 501(c)3 has as its mission to preserve the Mansion and the Hill House for future generations.
Now, for the drumroll… The original owner of what we now call the Ruscombe Mansion was Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott, prominent suffragist and social reformer who is listed in the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame. She founded the League of Women Voters of Maryland and served as president for twenty years. How symbiotic that for the past forty years, Ruscombe, Inc. has been operating out of her home as a women-owned and woman-operated holistic health care center dedicated to serving the community.
With the help of two volunteers, we have tracked down more of Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott’s impressive history, which we will present in a longer blog post soon. But briefly, in addition to working closely with the leaders of the suffrage movement and helping pass the 19th Amendment, Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott was a social reformer in several other areas. She established playgrounds for children in Baltimore by helping organize the Playground League, which later turned into the Department of Recreation. She was an early advocate of the establishment of the Juvenile Court, often sitting in court with young girls and women caught up in the justice system to give moral support and to monitor their interrogation. She advocated for the appointment of police women and worked to improve conditions for factory girls.
As a final tie back to our current Ruscombe healing community, Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott wanted to be a doctor but was prevented from applying to medical school because of her sex. Instead, she left for Switzerland, studied chemistry, and returned to put her education and her privilege to work in reforming the community. She found a new way to enable women to thrive because she recognized that empowering women was healing for the entire community – just as at Ruscombe, where we believe in inclusivity, and know that all people thrive when the community thrives. There are many similarities between Ruscombe‘s founder, Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus and Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott. Both have lived lives of service to enable others to find their own healing paths, both focusing their philanthropic efforts on improving the community.
As I said, there is a lot of history in these walls, and we at the Ruscombe Community are working to document and archive it for future generations. Next up: a review of the architectural firm behind our Mansion, Ellicott & Emmart. Plus, we are in conversation with former members of the Savitria peaceful living commune housed here from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, and a reunion is in the works. More on these in a future Letter from Ruscombe.
As you enjoy the rest of the articles in this issue, please click here to send a love offering to help us maintain these historical buildings and healing property. With the added tension we are all carrying with the increasing turmoil in the world, maintaining peaceful sanctuaries like Ruscombe is all the more important. Help us preserve the Ruscombe Mansion as the uniquely salutary location it is, where all visitors can focus on healing the world by healing themselves.