Queer Places:
104 E. 71st Street, New York
Woodlawn Cemetery
Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA
Margaret Urling Sibley Iselin (January 17, 1893 - April 3, 1951) was part
of the prominent Rochester department store family, Uhrling married
O'Donnell Iselin, eventually
Fletcher Steele's best friend.
She was active in various philantropies, notably the Union Settlement in E.
104th Street, and was a member of the Junior League, the Colonial Dames of
America and the Colony and Cosmopolitan Clubs.
Margaret Urling Sibley was the youngest child of Hiram Watson Sibley (1845–1932) and Margaret Durbin Harper (1852–1939). Hiram Sibley, one of the founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company, was her grandfather. She had two children, Peter Iselin (1920–2010), who was married to Margaretta Sargeant Large Duane (1928–2015), the daughter of Morris Duane (d. 1992), in 1952, and Emilie Iselin Wiggin.
O'Donnell Iselin ("Don Didie" at first, but soon, mercifully, "Don") exchanged an intimate correspondence, and maybe more, with Clayla Ward. A scion of the great Swiss-American banking house of Adrian Iselin, and the son-in-law of Hiram W. Sibley, he invited Clayla Werner to a Christmas party in 1913 and thereafter wrote regularly for 52 years, until Clayla's death. Although there was nothing to hide, so to speak, and although Urling Sibley Iselin seems not particularly to have minded when she found out about the correspondence in 1933, prudence at times dictated that Don address Clayla from his office and receive her replies at the Union Club.
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