Florence Jaffray "Daisy" Harriman (July 21, 1870 – August 31, 1967) was an American socialite, suffragist, social reformer, organizer, and diplomat.

[1] "She led one of the suffrage parades down Fifth Avenue, worked on campaigns on child labor and safe milk and, as minister to Norway in World War II, organized evacuation efforts while hiding in a forest from the Nazi invasion.

[5] In 1871 she became a niece by marriage of Helen Smythe, who married her mother's brother William Phillips Jaffray (1845–1887), a New York dry goods merchant.

[7] She and her two sisters, Caroline Elise and Ethel, were raised in and around New York City by her father and maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Somerville Jaffray.

[11] The list of attendees at their wedding included past and future president Grover Cleveland, railroad tycoons Cornelius Vanderbilt and Edward Harriman, John Jacob Astor IV, and J. P.

[16] She explained, "Should not the woman who spends the money which the employees help to provide take a special interest in their welfare, especially in that of the women wage earners?

"[17] In 1909, she created waves when, as the "wife of a banker," she "entertained one hundred members of the International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen at her summer home.

"[21] In 1912, Harriman's active support for the presidential campaign of then-New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson led to national publicity and leadership roles.

[22] Upon taking office, Wilson appointed Harriman as a member of the first U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, which Congress had authorized the previous year.

Hoping that the healing waters in the Bohemian spa in Karlsbad would benefit her husband, Harriman brought her family to Europe in June 1914.

[12] After leaving Karlsbad on the last train crossing the frontier through Germany to France, they eventually returned to New York on an armed British vessel, the RMS Adriatic.

The following year, Harriman found herself near the front lines of another war – the battle along the south side of the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas, between supporters of rebel Pancho Villa and the armies of Mexican leader Venustiano Carranza.

[12] During a break in hearings on working conditions for farmworkers that she conducted in Dallas in March 1915,[29] she accepted an offer to visit the Rio Grande area, where the United States was attempting to remain neutral as Mexican factions battled each other along the river.

After watching the battle for Matamoros, Tamaulipas from Brownsville, she began to tend to the wounded and visited the smoking battlefields, before returning to Washington.

[28] During the period of American neutrality, she became a cofounder of the Committee of Mercy, which was created to help the women and children and other European noncombatants made destitute by the war.

[35] Harriman reportedly "lost most of her fortune during the Depression," and "had to eke out her income by interior decorating and real estate" (while sharing her Washington home with well-paying guests).

Consequently, increasing tension in Europe and the imminent death of Turkish reformer Atatürk, compelled her to advise Secretary of State Hull to install Ismet Inonu as President of Turkey to assure a protectionist ally in the region.

Harriman is credited with arranging for the safety of other Americans and several members of the Norwegian royal family -- Crown Princess Märtha and her children Ragnhild, Astrid and Harald.

[10][39] She returned to the Nordic countries to complete the evacuation of current and future U.S. citizens through Finland on the United States Army transport USAT American Legion in August 1940.

[43] After the United States entered World War II, Harriman continued to write on causes important to her, and wrote the foreword to the English-language edition booklet of Natalia Zarembina "Oswiecim, Camp of Death," originally published in occupied Poland in 1942 by the PPS WRN.

[45] And despite her decades of involvement in the Democratic Party, she joined a bipartisan (but unsuccessful) effort to persuade Roosevelt's Republican opponent in the 1940 election, Wendell Willkie, to run for Governor of New York in 1942.

It states: In her illustrious career in public service, Mrs. Harriman has made singular and lasting contributions to the cause of peace and freedom.