Marguerite Harrison was an American debutante, journalist, linguist, and overseas spy who labored abroad through the years between the 2 world wars. She was additionally one of many solely American feminine spies at a time when ladies had been typically not permitted to do any such work.
Early Life
Marguerite was born shortly after the U.S. Civil Warfare right into a rich household in Maryland– the Bakers. Bernard Nadal Baker and Elizabeth Elton Baker (née Livezey) had been socialites– the previous a transport magnate. Marguerite’s sister Elizabeth married Albert C. Ritchie, who would later grow to be Maryland’s forty ninth governor. Throughout her childhood, the household spent a lot time in Europe and it was throughout that point that Marguerite honed her language expertise, changing into fluent in French and German and conversational in Italian and Spanish.
She married Baltimorean Thomas Bullitt Harrison II in 1901. According to The Times (Washington, D.C.), the affair was “essentially the most elaborate marriage ceremony that has taken place in Baltimore in a few years.” The Harrisons had been one of many oldest households in Baltimore and Thomas’s father and namesake was well-known within the cotton business.
Marguerite and Thomas’s son, Thomas Bullitt Harrison III, was born in 1902. In 1915, the newspapers reported that the elder Harrison “died from what is believed to be a tumor of the brain” leaving Marguerite a widow and single mom. Feeling obligated to repay her late husband’s money owed, she used her persuasive powers to land a job on the Sun (Baltimore, M.D.) as an assistant society editor, thus starting her profession in journalism (“Marguerite Harrison’s 9 Lives,” New York Instances, November 10, 1935, p. BR17). Throughout WWI, she took on many roles previously held by males who had been then serving abroad and regaled these experiences within the newspaper.
European Correspondent for the Solar
In response to the Baltimore Solar, “in the summertime of 1918, she provided her companies as a spy to the Navy Intelligence Division, was accepted, and, shortly after, left these shores for Germany, presumably as a correspondent for her newspaper” (The Solar, October 19, 1935, p. S04). She was the primary American lady to efficiently enter Germany because the begin of World Warfare I, as reported by the Solar on September 5, 1919. After her time in Germany, she moved on to Poland the place her studies on post-war circumstances made the entrance web page of the Solar.
In response to the New York Herald Tribune, “she went to Russia on the identical association that despatched her to Germany, outwardly a newspaper correspondent, really a spy for the Navy Intelligence Division.” Whereas in Russia, in line with the Washington Submit, Instances Herald (July 18, 1967, p. B3), she was arrested and imprisoned on the Lubyanka jail in Moscow on “prices of being a undercover agent with the U.S. Authorities and of making an attempt to depart the nation with out permission” (October 13, 1935, p. F6).
Senator Joseph Irwin France of Maryland and Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of the American Relief Committee, Herbert Hoover, secured her launch after 10 months in trade for American help to Russia.
In 1922 she was as soon as once more arrested by Soviet authorities due to a previous encounter with a double agent in Germany and returned to prison in Moscow. As soon as once more her byline appeared in her hometown newspaper and once more, she was launched for diplomatic causes (New York Herald Tribune, October 13, 1935, p. F6). Her expertise was later revealed in Marooned in Moscow: The Story of An American Woman Imprisoned in Russia.
The Martinsburg Journal (Martinsburg, W.V.) accurately predicted that Mrs. Harrison would “be besieged by lecture bureaus on her return.” Fittingly sufficient, her title ended up again within the Solar’s society pages for a talking engagement for the Junior League.
Later Years
After her undercover days, she shifted “her desire for adventure” to a unique medium–movie. She collaborated with Merian (sometimes spelled ‘Merion’) Cooper, a filmmaker and former aviator whom she first met in Poland. Together with Cooper, she was listed as a director, producer, and solid member of the documentary movie, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, which was added to the Library of Congress’s Nationwide Movie Registry in 1997. As well as, she was instrumental within the founding of the Society of Women Geographers in 1926.
She additionally married Arthur Blake in 1926 and continued to put in writing throughout their travels. They later moved to California the place Arthur died in 1947 (Washington Submit, Instances Herald, July 18, 1967, p. B3).
She died in 1967 and left an immensely fascinating (and due to the character of her profession, fairly mysterious) life to be additional explored. Search Chronicling America* for extra newspaper protection of Marguerite, undercover spies, and extra. Tell us what you discover within the feedback!
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