What Would Rosey Do?

Go Ask Alice.

What is the bright side to a life that was lived from rags to riches to a life sentence at an asylum? Finding someone 100 years later to reclaim your story and reimagine the

The idea struck me during a tour of Flagler’s Whitehall Museum in Palm Beach. Whitehall was a wedding gift from Henry Flagler to his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan, after his second wife, Ida Alice Shourds, was institutionalized in 1895. Gilded Age buffs know that the reason the Standard Oil magnate came to Florida in the first place was due to the poor respiratory health of his first wife, Mary Harkness. And that Whitehall was a gift to his young new bride, Mary Lily Kenan. But little is known about his second wife, Alice, the wife between the two Marys.

The docent led us up the staircase of the Grand Hall to the second-floor exhibits, informing us that “after the death of his beloved first wife, and having to put his second wife in a sanatorium, he finally found love again in Mary Lily… this is the Lace Room.” That was it – after the entire first floor dedicated to his first wife and family life, the second floor was going to be about his third wife, and wife number two was presented as an unfortunate setback between the two. I was immediately intrigued. I’m pretty sure I was busy Googling for the rest of the tour.

I had to know more about this woman who served as an aide to the first Mary, who quickly went insane and was replaced by the next Mary shortly afterward.

I’ve spent the last twenty years researching her story. Shourds was an actress before she became Mary Harkness Flagler's nurse. Two years after Mary's death, Flagler and Shourds married, moved to Florida, and for the better part of a decade Alice Flagler was the Queen of St. Augustine.

During this time, Flagler was very preoccupied with developing Florida as a summer retreat for his wealthy friends, and this consumed most of his time. In the meantime, Alice, relatively new to her socioeconomic station, lived an extravagant and increasingly reckless lifestyle. She threw many parties, dabbled in Spiritualism, and may have become addicted to alcohol and other drugs, which were readily available to the wealthy socialite set in the day.

Another thing that was common in the 19th century? Committing women to asylums when they became difficult.

There is so much more to her story that remains a mystery. Perhaps I will break out an Ouija board and ask Alice to help me find some of the answers I’ve been unable to unearth. I’ll ask Alice. I think she’ll know.