Los Angeles County

Biographies

 

 

 

 

 

MRS. MARMADUKE ESKRIDGE

 

 

            Mrs. Marmaduke Eskridge, founder and organizer of the California Women of the Golden West, and corresponding secretary of the club, came in 1905 to California, which state she had already learned to love.  She was responsible for the organization of the Women of the Golden West, which was founded on the principle of friendship between women and was the first organization in California for all women living in the state.  This is now a part of the Federation of Women’s Clubs.

            Mrs. Eskridge, who bore the maiden name of Elizabeth Marmaduke, was born in Fayette, Missouri, and represents one of the oldest and most distinguished families of that state.  Her father, John Meredith Marmaduke, was a banker in Mexico and St. Louis, Missouri, for over forty years.  There have been two governors in the family, Gen. John S. Marmaduke and James B. Marmaduke.  Old friends of the Marmaduke family were the late Hon. Champ Clark, Senator Cockrell, Senator Vest of Missouri, Senator Daniel of Virginia, Senator Shaffroth of Colorado and other men conspicuous in the public life of our nation.  John S. Marmaduke, brother of Mrs. Eskridge, became cashier of a St. Louis bank on attaining his majority and also promoted the first railway system in East St. Louis. 

            Elizabeth Marmaduke was but a year old when her parents removed from the city of Fayette and was sixteen years of age when she left Missouri and went to Washington, D. C., as a bride.  She is a graduate of Hardin College of Mexico, Missouri, and took post-graduate courses in pipe organ, piano and brass instruments at Kunkel’s Conservatory of Music in St. Louis.  Her husband, who is now deceased, was Beverley Buchanan Eskridge of Staunton, Virginia, whose mother was a first cousin of President James Buchanan and a descendant of Gen. George Eskridge, the guardian of Mary Ball, mother of George Washington.  It was Gen. George Eskridge who gave his ward in marriage in honor of Gen. George Washington, who was name din honor of Gen. George Eskridge.  Mr. and Mrs. Eskridge became the parents of two sons: Beverly Marmaduke Eskridge, who was born in Staunton, Virginia, and served with the rank of Captain in the World war; and Alfred Meredith Eskridge, who was a commissioned officer in the General Pershing’s army.  Both sons were educated in military schools and now reside in Los Angeles, where they enjoy an enviable reputation as business men of high standing and character.

            For a period of seventeen years, Mrs. Eskridge lived at Fairmount and Yale avenues in Washington D. C., near the old home of John A Logan, who was a leader in the social life of the capital.  She had the friendship of several presidents and was a loyal supporter of President Wilson in both of his campaigns.  In recognition of her capable organization work, President Wilson presented Mrs. Eskridge with a gavel cut from a tree that stood on the place where he was born in Staunton, Virginia.  Mrs. Eskridge was one of the original organizers of the Daughters of the Confederacy, in the history of which organization she is recorded as Elizabeth Marmaduke of Mexico, Missouri.  She also organized the California-Missouri Society of seventeen hundred members in San Francisco, also the Dixie and several other clubs in that city.

            Mrs. Eskridge came to California with her two small sons in 1906 and was in San Francisco on the morning of the earthquake and fire.  She witnessed the rebuilding and restoration of the city and there made her home for a period of fifteen years prior to taking up her permanent abode in Los Angeles.  Her acquaintance is statewide, and she has found the women of California broad-minded, brilliant, progressive and devoted to the highest ideals of the race.

            Mrs. Eskridge is a Californian without partisanship, living both north and south.  In 1914, Mayor James Rolph, Jr., of San Francisco appointed her his envoy to the pageant and masque at St. Louis.  She was the only woman appointed out of the forty-eight states and all the Latin-American countries there represented, and she as been entrusted with several important and confidential missions abroad.  In all of her undertakings she has manifested ability of a high order; she is a hard worker, a conscientious and loyal, capable of initiating and carrying out important plans, and is withal modest and unassuming, seeking advice and suggestions-an ideal coworker.  While engaged in Red Cross work in Washington D. C., at the time of the World war, was conceived the idea that is fundamental in the California Women of the Golden West.  Her duties in the department of the Bureau of Communication of the Red Cross brought her into contact with women all over the world.  She wrote hundreds of comforting and sympathetic letters to mothers, sisters and wives at home and abroad.   Here she discovered the great value of friendship between women, its power for good and the possibility of bringing the hearts of women closer together and making them akin.  In 1917, she formulated the basis of the league known as the California Women of the Golden West.  It was formally organized at the Gaylord hotel in Los Angeles on the 6th of April, 1929, with Mrs. George D. Gilmore as the first president by invitation of Mrs. Eskridge, and Mrs. Eskridge as first corresponding secretary.  Among its thousands of members are many of California’s most distinguished women, social and civic workers, club presidents, writers, artist, and musicians - a great band of golden-hearted women from the Golden State.  This organization demands something from each member in the way of important committee work.  There were fifty committees and fifty efficient committee chairmen carrying out constructive programs in all lines of women’s activities.  Mrs. Eskridge is a director of the Women’s International Association of Aeronautics and former chairman and former manager of the National and International Friendship World Tours of the California Women of the Golden West.  She organized and campaigned for the Cox-Roosevelt ticket in 1920 and has always been a loyal supporter and admirer of President and Mrs. Roosevelt.  She is the founder-president of the Golden Rule World League, which was organized, incorporated and refinanced by Mrs. Eskridge.  It is represented in forty-seven countries of Europe and throughout America.  There has been donated at Washington D. C., ground for a national and international club house for children, where congresses are to be held every year with delegates from all over the world.  The purpose of the organization is to seek the well-being and happiness of children all over the world and to establish permanent peace.

 

 

 

Transcribed By:  Michele Y. Larsen on July 24, 2012.

Source: California of the South Vol. V,  by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 231-234, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles,  Indianapolis.  1933.

© 2012 Michele Y. Larsen.

 

 

 

GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES 

GOLDEN NUGGET INDEX