Medora de Vallombrosa, Marquise de Morès (néevon Hoffmann) (August 21, 1856 – 1921), was an American heiress who married the
Marquis de Morès.
Early life
Medora was the daughter of Louis A.
von Hoffman (Hoffmann, with 2 n in German), a wealthy New York banker who was one of the founders of the
Knickerbocker Club,[1] and his wife, Athenais (née Grymes) von Hoffman (1832–1897), whose family had been prominent in Virginia and Louisiana.[2] Her younger sister, Pauline Grymes, was married to the wealthy German industrialist Baron
Ferdinand Eduard von Stumm whose family owned the
Neunkirchen Iron and Steelworks in 1878.[3] Her nephew was the German diplomat
Ferdinand Carl von Stumm,[4][5] who married another American heiress,
Constance Hoyt (daughter of
Solicitor GeneralHenry Hoyt Jr.).[6]
Athenais Amot Manca (1883–1969), who married French Ambassador Louis M. Henry Pichon, Baron Pichon (1873–1933), at age 17.[16] In 1929, Athenais married Baron de Graffenried; he died in 1936. She then married Henry Guerracina and moved to Argentina during
World War II; returning to France in 1950, where she died in 1969.[1]
Louis Richard Amot Manca, Duke de Vallombrosa (1885–1959), who grew up in France and was educated at
Yale University; he became a banker until 1936 when he retired and moved to Switzerland; he married Marie-Thérèse du Bourg de Bozas at
Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot Church, in October 1917.[17]
Count Paul Amot Manca de Morès de Vallombrosa (1890–1950), a
Harvard graduate who became a banker with the
Bankers Trust in Paris before becoming a partner in the Paris brokerage house of Saint Phalle & Co.; he married Ruth (née Obre) Goldbeck, widow of Walter Dean Goldbeck, an American portrait painter, and sister of Arthur Obre,[18] in 1928.[19] They divorced in 1935 and she married race car driver
André Dubonnet in 1937.[20][21]
After the assassination of the Marquis de Morès in 1896, the Marquise de Morès lived in both
Paris and
Cannes, France. During
World War I, she turned her home into a hospital for wounded soldiers. She died at
Cannes in 1921 of a leg injury she received while working as a nurse.[22] The wound never fully healed. Others say she died of an infectious disease she acquired while touring India with her husband. This gave her bouts of illness throughout her life which eventually resulted in her death.[23]
Legacy
The town of
Medora, North Dakota,[24] founded in 1883, was named by the Marquis in her honor. The Marquis's meat packing plant failed and the town fell into a decline after the family left. However, the story of the
Marquis de Mores and Medora are now featured in The Medora Musical held every summer in Medora, a major tourist town in the North Dakota
Badlands. The 26-room
clapboard-sided ranch house the Marquis built for his heiress wife, known as the "
Chateau de Mores", has been restored, and tours of it are given.
Antonio Areddu, Il marchesato di Mores. Le origini, il duca dell´Asinara, le lotte antifeudali, l´abolizione del feudo e le vicende del marquis de Morès, Condaghes, Cagliari 2011.
Antonio Areddu, Vita e morte del marchese di Mores Antoine Manca (1858-1896), Cagliari, Condaghes, 2018