Elinor Josephine Cissy Patterson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 7,1881, to the daughter of Robert and Elinor "Nellie" Cissy Patterson.
14 Facts About Cissy Patterson
2.
Cissy Patterson was educated at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut.
3.
Cissy Patterson went with the Count to his home, a huge feudal manor in Russian Poland.
4.
Cissy Patterson took their child, hiding her in a house near London, but the Count pursued her and kidnapped the little Countess, hiding her in an Austrian convent.
5.
Cissy Patterson filed for divorce, which took thirteen years to obtain.
6.
Cissy Patterson published two novels, romans a clef, Glass Houses and Fall Flight, part of her feud with former friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
7.
Cissy Patterson died four years later and in 1930, Mrs Schlesinger legally changed her name to Mrs Eleanor Medill Patterson.
8.
Cissy Patterson tried to buy Hearst's two Washington papers, the morning Washington Herald and the evening Washington Times.
9.
Cissy Patterson encouraged society reporting and the women's page and hired many women as reporters including Adela Rogers St Johns and Martha Blair.
10.
Cissy Patterson shifted the papers' editorial stance sharply to the right.
11.
Cissy Patterson was an ardent isolationist and opponent of the administration of Franklin D Roosevelt.
12.
Cissy Patterson feuded with her daughter, who publicly "divorced" her in 1945, and with her former son-in-law, Drew Pearson, by whom she had a granddaughter, Ellen Cameron Pearson Arnold.
13.
Cissy Patterson left the paper to seven of her editors who within the year sold it to her cousin Colonel McCormick.
14.
Cissy Patterson held onto the paper for five years, and although for several years he seemed close to returning it to profitability, it eventually proved too great a financial drain.