Wellesca Pollock Allen

But Pollock is not much of a businessman. The only boy among six sisters, he has been indulged for most of his life. His little sister Wellesca, a kindergarten teacher in Washington, is a frequent visitor to Skyland. At some point in the summer of 1900, amid the camp’s primitive cabins, she meets Harrison G. Dyar. She is 29. He is 34. Both are smart, strong-willed and curious. Dyar’s search for knowledge is not confined to the insect world. He has a philosophical and literary bent that he explores in short stories. Wellesca’s curiosity isn’t confined to the classroom. She has been seeking enlightenment in the Bahai religion. Perhaps they are just moved by the bracing mountain air. While it would be a stretch to describe Skyland as a nest of free love, there is a certain relaxation of strictures away from the city. Flirtations are common, assignations, too. What happens in Skyland stays in Skyland. Years before Dyar sticks a single spade in the earth to start building secret tunnels under his D.C. home, he embarks on a clandestine project of another sort: He enters an adulterous love affair with Wellesca Pollock. This is good news for George Pollock, the feckless master of Skyland. Dyar is a wealthy man. Over the next 15 years, as he engages in an increasingly reckless dalliance with Wellesca, Dyar will lend Pollock thousands of dollars to keep the resort going... When the summer of 1900 is over and Dyar is back at his desk in the National Museum on the Mall, he prepares an entry for a scientific journal. It has fallen to him to name a newly discovered species of moth. He dubs it Parasa wellesca, noting: “Named in honor of Miss Wellesca Pollock of Washington, District of Columbia.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/an-investment-fueled-by-a-reck...

Her daughters Susan Plessner Pollock and Wellesca Pollock Allen (an early adherent of the Baha'i Faith in America, who met the son of the Founder of the faith, 'Abdu'l-Baha, during his travels in North America) were also active in the kindergarten movement, and influenced the popularity of kindergartens in Washington, D.C. and abroad. - Nina C. Vandewalker: The Kindergarten In American Education, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908, pp. 13, 17, 28, 30-31