Scope and Content Note
The papers of Evalyn Walsh McLean (1886-1947) relate to the life of one of Washington’s notable social matrons. The material spans a half century beginning with the Walsh family in the 1880s and extending to McLean’s death in 1947. The collection is organized into eight series: Family Correspondence, Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, Business Correspondence, Subject File, Financial-Legal Papers, Miscellany, and Oversize.
Evalyn Walsh McLean was the daughter of Thomas F. Walsh of Washington, D.C., whose successful mining ventures in Colorado made him a fortune. In 1907 she married Edward Beale McLean, heir to a family fortune that included ownership of the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Washington Post, thus combining two great family fortunes. Evalyn McLean soon established herself as a socialite, particularly during the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and her status remained high during the Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman administrations.
As the owner of the Hope diamond, which she bought for over $150,000 in 1912, McLean was able to command the social limelight. She became involved in the kidnapping case of Charles Augustus Lindbergh's baby by paying $100,000 to Gaston B. Means, falling prey to a hoax. Her close relationship to several key figures in the Teapot Dome Scandal in 1924 further contributed to her publicity.
The Special Correspondence file includes the elite of the entertainment, political, and social worlds during McLean’s lifetime. Correspondents include Alben William Barkley, Bernard M. Baruch, William Jennings Bryan, William C. Bullitt (1891-1967), Calvin Coolidge, H. M. Daugherty, Florence Kling Harding, Warren G. Harding, William Randolph Hearst, Herbert Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, Cordell Hull, Elsa Maxwell, William H. Taft, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson, and Darryl Francis Zanuck. Many of the letters, however, are brief social notes. Business Correspondence mostly relates to the Walsh mining interests and various matters dealing with theEnquirer and the Post.
The Subject File covers a variety of topics such as McLean’s divorce proceedings, the Hope diamond, the Lindbergh case, and Teapot Dome. Many of McLean’s writings are represented, including drafts of her column in the Washington Times Herald and the manuscript of her book, Father Struck It Rich. The Warren G. Harding file contains a revision, with additions, of the 1922 published book Warren Gamaliel Harding: President of the United States attributed to William Estabrook Chancellor. The book was a racist attack on Harding and rumored to have been suppressed by the federal government. The handwritten revisions on the published manuscript are in Chancellor's handwriting and indicate that he was likely in Canada when the book was originally published. Dissatisfied with the book, he had made these revisions from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and had sent the pages in the fall of 1922 to the publisher, Sentinel Press (a small Ohio press that also printed material for the Ku Klux Klan), for a revised edition. The presence of this manuscript in the McLean Papers relates to the story of federal agents confiscating copies of the book and the printing plates from Ohio in November of 1922 and bringing them back to Washington, D.C. for destruction at Friendship, the estate of the McLeans. The 1922 general correspondence file contains a printed Klan letter and the printing plate dated November 8, 1922, in a Justice Department envelope.
The Financial-Legal Papers series treats business as well as personal matters, and the Miscellany series contains photographs, printed matter, notes, broadsides, and other miscellaneous items.