Queer Places:
Mount Hebron Cemetery
Winchester, Winchester City, Virginia, USA
Cornelia Louisa Crow Carr (June 8, 1833 - August 19, 1922) was born in Cadiz, Trigg County, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Wayman Crow (1808-1885) and Isabella Buck Conn (1813-1892), and sister Emma Crow. She married Lucien Carr in 1854.
She named her daughter after her best friend Harriet Hosmer, who in turn called Carr her “best friend and sister” and referred to herself as little Harriet’s aunt. Harriet Hosmer showed an early aptitude for modeling, and studied anatomy with her father. Through the influence of family friend Wayman Crow, father of Cornelia, she attended the anatomical instruction of Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell at the Missouri Medical College (then the medical department of the state university). She lived with Cornelia Crow, an intimate friend she had met at the Lenox Academy, and her family. Wayman Crow, a leading citizen and philanthropist, would later become one of her primary benefactors. Produced the year after her dear friend Cornelia Crow married Lucien Carr, her sculpture Oenone expresses a warm sensuality redolent of Hosmer’s and Crow’s “romantic friendship” in Lenox, an experience that remained central to both their lives. In fact, the sculptor gave a bust of Daphne to Cornelia as a “love gift” in the fall of 1854. “When Daphne arrives, kiss her lips and then remember that I kissed her just before she left me,” Hosmer wrote. However, with its peekaboo sensuality, Oenone transgressed into the carnal world, suggesting a blatant sexuality. The sculpture was never shown publicly in the nineteenth century, remaining instead in the residence of Hosmer’s patron, where it was readily available for Cornelia’s private viewing.
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