Eugenie Mary "May" Davie

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Eugenie Mary "May" Davie (Ladenburg)

Birthdate:
Birthplace: New York, New York County, New York, United States
Death: September 19, 1975 (80)
New York, New York County, New York, United States
Place of Burial: Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States
Immediate Family:

Daughter of Moritz Adolph Emil Ladenburg and Emily Louise Ladenburg
Wife of Preston Davie

Managed by: Private User
Last Updated:

About Eugenie Mary "May" Davie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Mary_Ladenburg_Davie

Eugenie Mary "May" Ladenburg Davie (1895–September 19, 1975) was a noted Republican activist in New York and a director of the controversial Pioneer Fund at the end of her life. She was second wife to influential lawyer Preston Davie.

Political activism

Davie was descended from a Tammany Hall founder and was a lifelong activist. Her 1917 affair with Bernard Baruch was of great interest to Alice Roosevelt Longworth who monitored the affair "in the name of patriotism," in the words of historian Blanche Wiesen Cook. She once angered pilot Amelia Earhart by injecting political commentary into a speech introduction.

Davie was on the Republican National Finance Committee, a regent of the National Library of Medicine, a trustee at Adelphi College and Long Island University; chairwoman of the Robert A. Taft Institute of Government.

A onetime leader of the Landon Volunteers, she was vice president of the American Women's Voluntary Services, Inc. She butted heads with Fiorello La Guardia during World War II after he told William Fellowes Morgan, Jr. to dismiss her as an unpaid assistant. She became an active member of the Republican Party and was the head of the Woman’s Auxiliary during Wendell Willkie’s campaign to unseat Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. La Guardia's tenure marked the end of the Tammany power in New York, and Davie's political influence gradually faded over the ensuing decades.

Later life

Her husband died in 1967, but she continued to go by Mrs. Preston Davie in formal situations. In the last year of her life, she became involved in the Pioneer Fund as a Director. She was informally known as May Davie, the name under which her New York Times obituary appeared.

Eugenie Mary Ladenburg Davie. (2014, May 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:31, August 21, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eugenie_Mary_Ladenburg_Da...

NY Times Obit:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1975/09/20/80058395.h...

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/MCNM-WK9

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Eugenie Mary "May" Davie's Timeline

1895
January 31, 1895
New York, New York County, New York, United States
1975
September 19, 1975
Age 80
New York, New York County, New York, United States
September 25, 1975
Age 80
Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States