Please note this is a hybrid event - you have the option to attend in person or virtually. Registrations are required for all attendees. For in-person attendees, the event will run from 12 - 2:15 pm and will include a 2 course lunch with a glass of wine. The live stream will begin around 1:05 pm (virtual attendees will be sent a link for the event via email).
Virginia Murray Bacon, who owned the DACOR Bacon House from 1923 to 1980, was a celebrated salonniere, hosting politicians, diplomats, opera divas and European royalty at her receptions, dinners and soirees. In fact for much of its history the House was owned and managed by women who exercised significant influence in official and social Washington despite limitations on their ability to hold public office or live independent lives. Interior drawing rooms were the principal field of play. Our panelists will take an in-depth look at how these women made their presence—and DACOR Bacon House itself—known during a time of significant changes in women’s rights and freedoms during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the nineteenth century, Sally Carroll (whose husband William was Clerk of the Supreme Court), was a much-beloved hostess who made 1801 F Street almost as well-known as the White House. The next owner, Mollie Fuller (wife of Chief Justice Melville Fuller), held yearly receptions for as many as 600, special dinners for newly appointed associate justices, and weekly “at homes” in the tradition of socially prominent Washington women. In the twentieth century, Ruth Medill McCormick, who rented the House in the years 1919-1923, popularized the Sunday “buffet” dinner for lawmakers and their wives, while Virginia Bacon hosted anywhere from 10 to 150 people on a near weekly basis whenever she was in town. McCormick and Bacon also became political operatives and pursued causes in their own right apart from their husbands. All of these women excelled in the tradition that since the days of Dolley Madison has gathered together notable policymakers and power brokers in private homes to discuss major issues of the day.
The panel will include Elizabeth Warner, Archivist, DACOR Bacon House; Dr. Jasmine Noelle Yarish, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of the District of Columbia; and Dr. Terrence Walz, Historian, DACOR Bacon House.
Elizabeth Warner is the Archivist for the DACOR Bacon House Foundation. Her latest article on Mrs. Bacon’s life appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Washington History magazine. A lawyer by training, she spent 14 years living and working overseas, mostly to promote civil rights, and currently teaches political science at New England College in addition to her work with DBHF.
Dr. Jasmine Noelle Yarish is a professional academic and university/college instructor. She is an assistant professor of political science and coordinator of the global studies concentration at the University of the District of Columbia. Her expertise is in the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and democratic theory. Her research aims to extend the idea of abolition democracy theorized by W.E.B. Du Bois to include the political and intellectual contributions made by Black women to the era of Reconstruction (1850-1880). Her archival commitments to revisiting that early period of contemporary political thought, the primary democratization period in American political development, and the unique case of Philadelphia in rethinking the significance of Reconstruction for the discipline of political science and the globe place Dr. JNY's scholarship as part and parcel of the growing literature on the "Third Reconstruction."
Dr. Terrence Walz has been Historian of the DACOR Bacon House since 2019. He is the author of two books on the history of Egypt, but since joining DACOR in 2017 he has focused on the history of the house and its inhabitants during the first one hundred years of its existence.
Location
Setting: Hybrid DACOR Bacon House OR Online 1801 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 UNITED STATES
