11 Facts About Belle Skinner

Ruth Isabelle Skinner was an American businesswoman and philanthropist.

Belle Skinner was a daughter of silk manufacturer William Skinner and his second wife, the former Sarah Elizabeth Allen.

Belle Skinner was a humanitarian and music-lover whose life her brother William memorialized in the construction of the Skinner Hall of Music at Vassar College in 1932.

Belle Skinner lived most of her life at the family home, Wistariahurst, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, now a historic site.

Belle Skinner renovated and expanded this house to reflect her interests, including adding the music room, where she housed her musical instrument collection, now housed at Yale University.

Belle Skinner was presented the Medaille de la Reconnaissance francaise by future French president and then-commissioner general of Alsace-Lorraine, Alexandre Millerand, in January 1919, at the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris.

Belle Skinner led the effort to rally American cities to adopt French villages during the postwar reconstruction, establishing the American Committee of Villages Liberes in New York City later that year.

Ultimately Belle Skinner would contribute greatly to her alma mater, providing Vassar College with the first fellowship for foreign studies in 1926, $10,000 for graduates to study history in France, as she had spent time in Paris as a young girl herself soon after her own graduation.

Belle Skinner contracted pneumonia and died on April 9,1928, her death being reported by papers all across France and the United States.

Belle Skinner's body was brought back to New York City, where a funeral service was held, after which a second was held days later at the Skinner Memorial Chapel of the Holyoke United Congregational Church.

Belle Skinner was interred in the family's plot at Forestdale Cemetery.