Frances Adelaide Pyle

Adelaide was a brillian linguist who spoke several languages and strove to promote the teaching of foreign languages in the schools. She was interested in early childhood education and is said to have founded the first nursery school in the US.

Adelaide was a small, sedate woman who loved the grand style. She made many trips to Europe accompanied by her beribboned lapdog and aspired to the lifestyle of the newly risen class of American millionaires toward which she aspired to climb. (Probate records describe her estate at less than a million dollars).

Adelaide had a darker side. One descendant characterized her as an "irate... old biddy" who tended to fly into a rage at anyone who dared to cross her. Although her daughters Adelia and Sara were warm and sensitive, Adelaide was bossy, domineering and hard as nailes. Another descendent has drawn a verbal picture of a woman, possibly bipolar, given to experimental religion, whose aggressive and dominating personality could suddenly give way to sullen withdrawal: "she was not normal or well balanced." She would frequently pull her children out of school according to her whims. On more than one occasion she decided to leave her husband, ordered her servants to pack her trunks and took her favorite daughter, Sara, with her to Europe, leaving Adelia and the boys home in New York with their father.

"Padre Pio: The True Story"

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/81914760/frances-adelaide-pyle

Frances Adelaide McAlpin Pyle BIRTH 28 Feb 1860 New York, New York County (Manhattan), New York, USA DEATH 20 Sep 1937 Noroton, Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA BURIAL Evergreen Cemetery Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey, USA PLOT Section 28, Plot 20 MEMORIAL ID 81914760 MEMORIAL PHOTOS 1 FLOWERS 2 Family Members

Parents Photo David Hunter McAlpin 1816–1901

Photo Frances Adelaide Rose McAlpin 1829–1870

Spouse Photo James Tolman Pyle 1855–1912

Siblings Photo Douglas P. McAlpin* 1846–1847

Photo Edwin Augustus McAlpin* 1848–1917

Photo David Hunter McAlpin* 1851–1853

Photo Joseph Rose McAlpin* 1853–1888

Photo George Lodowick McAlpin* 1856–1922

Photo William Willet McAlpin* 1858–1925

David Hunter McAlpin* 1862–1934

Photo Charles Williston McAlpin* 1865–1942

Photo John Randolph McAlpin* 1870–1893

Children Photo James McAlpin Pyle* 1884–1954

Photo David Hunter McAlpin Pyle* 1886–1944

Photo Mary Pyle* 1888–1968

Photo Charles McAlpin Pyle* 1893–1966

Gordon McAlpin Pyle* 1901–1943