Marian Draughn

Identity:

'Marion' or Marian Draughn was supposedly the daughter of Thomas Settle (1831–1888), judge and politician in North Carolina. She had a successful career as an actress, and a slightly stormy personal life.

In the 1870 US census Thomas Settle, Judge of the Supreme Court, was living in Mayo Township, North Carolina: Mary (aged 31) was 'keeping house' (this was his wife Mary Ann Bynum Glen), and their children Nettie (10), Mary (6), Thomas (5), Douglas (1) and baby Elizabeth were present. They had four servants.

The 'Settle Family Tree' records the birth of another daughter, 'Florida Flossie Settle' in Greensboro, Guilford, North Carolina in 1870, and her death date as 1 June 1925 in Mecklenberg, North Carolina.

The identification of Marion Draughn as Flossie Settle is repeatedly recorded in the American newspapers of 1906. On 13 October 1906, The Statesville Record And Landmark, North Carolina, p. 1, and the Washington Post, DC., 13 November 1906, p. 5, recorded that 'Marian Draughn Is Miss Flossie Settle' and she was involved in a lawsuit. Another paper, The Union Republican from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 22 November 1906, p. 4, also announced, 'Miss Marion Draughn is Miss Flossie Settle'. The case, Settle v. Settle 141 N.C. 553 (N.C. 1906), concerned the estate of their mother, Mary.

Marion/Floreda appears to have returned to Europe thereafter. However, during the First World War, on 10 December 1916, The Charlotte News, p. 6, recorded 'Miss Floreda Settle, of Paris, is the guest of her sister, Mrs. J. Renwick Wilkes, Lamar Avenue. This is Miss Settle's first visit to America in several years'.

FindAGrave gives the name Floreda Settle as born on 15 November 1878 and death 11 August 1940, in Greensboro.

Life:

The Pennells say that the illustrators Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) and Philip William May (1864-1903) sent her to Whistler - probably in Paris - and Whistler called her his ‘Coon Girl’. She posed for him about 1899, for Portrait of Miss Marian Draughn y533. In December 1899 Whistler considered her portrait nearly completed and ready for exhibition at the Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galeries George Petit, Paris, 1899. Hoping to put the finishing touches to the picture, he pressed Miss Draughn to postpone an appointment with another artist (GUW #11205). She remained in contact with Whistler, for instance, when he was in Paris and she was in London in October 1901, and it is possible that she continued to pose for Whistler.

She may have been one of the ‘Gibson Girls’: a collection of Gibson’s pen drawings of beautiful young American women was published in London in 1900. She starred in The Education of Mr. Pipp (a play written by Augustus Thomas based on a series of cartoons by Gibson) at the Broadway Theatre in 1905.

Bibliography:

Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921 ; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 .

Setle Family Tree, Ancestry.com. 'Floreda Settle', FinaAGrave website.