Catskills Past South Kortright Woman Organizes International Conference

By T.M. Bradshaw

In her August 31, 1946, “My Day” column, Eleanor Roosevelt discussed a leaflet she had received concerning a ten-day conference scheduled for that October in the Catskill town of South Kortright. “My Day” was a six-day-a-week syndication that ran from December 1935 to September 1962; during its height in the 1950s it appeared in ninety newspapers across the country.

The South Kortright event was to be an international assembly of women held at the home of Alice T. McLean. The planned topics of discussion included the current state of the world, politically and economically; what sort of social order might provide desirable alternatives; and how the attendees could use the ideas shared to benefit their communities and countries, and therefore, the world.

Alice Throckmorton McLean was born March 8, 1886, in New York City, youngest of three daughters of James McLean and Sara Throckmorton McLean. James McLean was born in New York City in 1846, the son of a Scottish immigrant, Edward W. McLean, and a Bovina native, Margaret MacFarland McLean. James McLean, along with his parents and three sisters moved full time to the South Kortright farm in 1859. James worked on the farm until he was 19, then set out on the first steps of a very successful business career, culminating as vice president of Phelps, Dodge & Co., a mining firm.

James, Sara and their three daughters lived on Fifth Avenue most of the year, alternating summers in France, England, Egypt, Turkey, or Greece with summers on their South Kortright estate.

Alice often traveled with her father on business, visiting mining camps, learning to ride, play polo, drive tandem and four-inhand. She spoke French, German, and Italian fluently.

On August 21, 1904, Alice married Edward L. Tinker at the South Kortright property; the bride was 18, the groom a few weeks shy of 23 and a recent graduate of Columbia University. The couple had two sons, Edward and James. They divorced in 1915. Edward L. Tinker remarried in 1916. Alice took back her maiden name in 1919 and also legally changed her sons’ surnames to McLean.

Following her divorce, Alice went to England every fall to hunt. On one such trip, in 1938, she became interested in the

Women’s Voluntary Services, which had been formed that May. A study of that group and other similar groups in Switzerland and Finland led her to design posters in 1939, encouraging American women to activism for social and war relief.

In 1940, the American Women’s Voluntary Services was formed in an East 62 Street basement in Manhattan, but they soon needed larger quarters: membership was over 18,000 even before Pearl Harbor; within months after, over 50,000 new members joined in New York alone. Eventually its national membership exceeded 300,000.

Left to right: Sixteen-year-old Mary Peters, later Betz, Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Throckmorton McLean at the October 1946 International Women's Assembly

Photo by V.B. Cantwell

Alice’s efforts at promotion of this new organization took some interesting turns. She opened her South Kortright home for a barbecue on September 21, 1940. Thousands of people came. A team of butchers carved up the slow-cooked beef and a dozen servers circulated with the filled plates. The entertainment included a concert by a seven-piece band, multiple showings of a movie, dancing, and fireworks. Speakers were on hand to describe the activities of the AWVS; encouraging participation; ten new units were formed that day.

Delaware County units were discussed a year later in an October 12, 1941, New York Times article. Those members were storing surplus home-canned goods, blankets, sweaters, and other supplies at home. Being prepared for the possibility that New York City might have to be evacuated was the reason cited for not sending those supplies on to Europe.

In 1944, Alice moved to her estate in South Kortright full time and remained there until 1948. Newspaper articles both before and after 1944 reveal that under Alice’s management animals raised on the estate were entered into competitions at county and other fairs, often winning ribbons, particularly horses and Belted Galloway cattle, a Scottish breed, perhaps originally chosen by her father in a nod to his Scottish heritage.

By 1945 AWVS volunteers were providing services including child care, conservation and salvage, canteens, ambulance driving, physical rehabilitation programs such as teaching Braille to blinded soldiers, and war service photography. Because the organization did not receive substantial support from the federal government, Alice McLean spent much of her personal fortune to keep the AWVS financially viable.

The 1946 Women’s Assembly was planned to bring together women leaders from the UN. Advance praise of the idea came from President Truman. Numerous women’s professional and educational organizations sponsored the event. Participants included Eleanor Roosevelt, Mrs. Harry Truman, and Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor

Articles in the New York Times written by a Lucy Greenbaum bookended the start and finish of the South Kortright Women’s Assembly. At the beginning Greenbaum called it “one of the most unusual international conventions ever held.” The International Assembly of Women opened on October 13, 1946, in the carriage house on the McLean estate with two hundred women from 53 countries, including some from former enemy countries, gathering to discuss what they could do to promote peace and improve people’s lives worldwide.

A speaker on that first day, a Mrs. Edward Carter, began by warning the delegates not to smoke in the building. “There is hay above us and it is very dangerous.” She also announced that soap was in short supply, meals would likely be served on paper plates, and those staying in the local villages would have to make their own beds. Housekeeping issues attended to, Mrs. Carter said, “we are not here to fight for our different national governments.We are here for the solution for common problems of humanity.”

In her welcome address, Alice McLean explained the reason behind the location of the assembly. “It’s something I’ve dreamed about since the early days of the war. Having it here means grass roots and home, everything that comes the closest to what I believe to be the fundamentals of life. It’s the earth, the community, the individual—everything that counts.” As to its purpose, she said she hoped it would prove to be “a road of understanding, something that leads to a broad common denominator so that we can find our way out of the many complex levels on which we find ourselves today.”

A final all-day session was held at the Waldorf-Astoria, the only part of the conference not held in South Kortright. According to the Times article of October 25, Ana Rosa de Martinez Guerrero of Argentina discarded her planned remarks on the spiritual and moral aspects of society to instead call on the women of the world to help put an end to dictatorships. She explained her decision to change the theme of her address because “There is nothing else if dictatorships exist.”

One idea that came out of the October convention was to support the effort to develop an Italian “Boys Town” to aid abandoned and orphaned European children. Alice McLean opened her home again in January 1947, hosting Italian violinist Enrico Pratt to perform a benefit concert for that purpose.

And then in 1948 Alice did more than open her home for an event—she donated the mansion, along with 14 acres, to the International Valley Foundation. The foundation’s purpose was to “give hope to the world by helping the coming generation” by furthering interest in creative work—writing, music, painting— and setting up an international center for children displaced by the war. Writers, artists, and musicians from anywhere in the world were welcome to study there. Small fees covered room, board, and tuition. The writers center began operation on July 1, 1948, with eight students under the direction of Vieva Dawley Smith. Elizabeth Major, a Hungarian who had been a voice teacher at the Muziek Lyceum in Amsterdam and Professor Herman Kaplan of Columbia University, were in charge of the music program. Stamford native, painter LaMont Warner, art teacher at Stamford Central School and formerly a professor at Columbia and Newton Merrill of Florida managed the art program. Concerts and art exhibitions were presented as fundraisers in support of the children’s village.

McLean eventually moved to Baltimore to live with one of her sons.

Alice T. McLean died October 25, 1968, at the age of 82 in a Baltimore nursing home.