Mrs. William H Fitch III, Detroit, Michigan, 1880's Part 2

This is the second post on the life of Eleanora Fitch. Check out the previous post for Part 1.

When we left off Eleanora's story, she had just become a widow after losing her first husband, William H. Fitch, in 1884. In November of the next year, Eleanora Fitch married her second husband, William J. Murphy, in Detroit, Michigan. The new couple moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where they were joined by Eleanora's daughter, Alice. 

Alice Underwood Fitch lived quite an interesting life, the timeline of which isn't always clear. In 1882, when she was 19, Alice married James H. Lynch in a small wedding. The marriage lasted only a few years until, as a Detroit Free Press article noted, "after much tribulation on the part of the honorable and devoted wife," the couple divorced.  At some point following the divorce, Alice decided to pursue her love of the stage and became an actress with Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Company at the Lyceum Theatre in New York, where she performed in such plays as "The Charity Ball." This information also comes from a 1908 article in the Detroit Free Press, though I haven't been able to find any more on Alice's time as an actress. Other newspapers note that Alice did live with her mother and step-father in Fort Worth, though for what period I'm not sure. 

My biggest mystery in researching Eleanora's life is actually her death. I cannot find any death records, obituary, or even a grave that might tell me when exactly Eleanora passed away. My best guess is sometime in the late 1890s. In the 1900 Census, William J. Murphy is living in a boarding house in Fort Worth and is listed as "widowed." Around 1899, Alice moved to Paris to study art. It makes sense that she might choose to leave Fort Worth soon after her mother's death. 

Alice had great success as an artist in France and became notable for her miniature portraits and reproductions of classic paintings. J.P. Morgan even commissioned her to recreate a portrait of Napoleon in miniature, which Alice herself claimed was "valued at fifty thousand francs" and was "in a frame studded with about three hundred diamonds." For this miniature, she was honored with the French "Ordre des Palmes académiques," an order bestowed on distinguished academics. At the start of the First World War, Alice trained to be a nurse and volunteered at the American Red Cross Military Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside of Paris. She worked as a night nurse there for three months before suffering from a nervous breakdown and returning to Fort Worth to stay with a friend. She spent the remainder of the war visiting schools to speak of her experiences as a nurse and encouraging girls to learn first aid skills. Alice then continued her work as an artist in the United States. She passed away in California in 1936 at age 73.

If you know who these folks may be and can help us fill in the gaps of Eleanora's life, let us know in the comments!