Louisa d'Andelot Carpenter
Louisa d'Andelot Carpenter (October 16, 1907 – February 8, 1976) was a du Pont family heiress, noted horsewoman, early woman aviator, Jazz Age socialite, and philanthropist.
On July 20, 1929, Carpenter married John Lord King Jenney (1904-2005), a Princeton graduate and DuPont executive who retired from his 40-year career with the company in 1967.
[7][8] As an active sportswoman and socialite who hosted social and recreational gatherings at her many homes, Carpenter was mentioned frequently in café society and celebrity columns of the press in her lifetime.
In late 1929, Carpenter met Libby Holman, a Broadway actress and singer, who was to become an important person in her life, from lover to lifelong friend.
[10]: 79–81 Libby Holman married tobacco heir and young aviator Zachary Smith Reynolds in 1931, and only months later was indicted for his murder after a drunken house party in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Carpenter sheltered Holman from the hounding press before the indictment was made, and paid Libby's $25,000 bail, appearing at the Wentworth, North Carolina, courthouse in such mannish clothes that bystanders and reporters thought she was a man.
[10]: 154–160, 166 The scandalous murder charge against Holman was dropped in late 1932 and she returned to live with Carpenter in Delaware, awaiting the birth of her child by Reynolds.
According to Holman biographer Jon Bradshaw, "Their relationship had ripened into what was known in the nineteenth century as a 'Boston marriage': that is, they were romantic friends ... " When Topper Reynolds was about 18 months old, Carpenter adopted "Sunny"[11] from a Philadelphia orphanage and the children were raised as siblings.
Built of quarried stone with a datestone of 1701, Strand Millas is from the era of William Penn's Quaker colony in Delaware and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
[2] This home, described as a "telescoping house" with its center structure flanked on each side by two balanced additions, was built between 1825 and 1840 on land traced back to a 1764 patent for James Brown.
She was survived by three children: Sonia C. Tingle, Carla C. Matthews, and Ronald d'Andelot Carpenter, nine grandchildren, and her two brothers and sister Renee Draper.
At her death, Carpenter was president of the Springfield Foundation, Inc., which she had founded in 1963 to address poor housing conditions for black residents in Chestertown, Maryland.
