Elizabeth Howard Barbour Baden
1883-1972

Elizabeth Baden with daughter Mary and son Jim Henry, who had just completed his WWII service as a weather scientist.  Jim Henry is said to have assisted in the weather planning for D Day.

Elizabeth Barbour was born in Washington, DC on August 31, 1883.  Her father, Will Barbour, was a government employee.  As a young woman, she traveled to Boston where she worked in a settlement house among the poor (who at that time were the Irish!)  As a social worker in the early 20th century, she was part of an important movement in American History.

Elizabeth Baden (in rear, pencil line) at a Christmas Party at a Settlement House in Boston

As a life long Washingtonian, Elizabeth witnessed an incredible amount of history.  She went to Fort Myer (in 1903?) to see the Wright Brothers demonstrate their new invention for the U.S. Army.  She saw Washington National Cathedral grow from a hole in the ground in the early 1900's to a massive structure in the early 70's, and supported it all her life as a devout Episcopalian.  She spoke of attending a ceremony where Woodrow Wilson "laid a cornerstone" but we have not been able to verify exactly which occasion this was.  The foundation stone was put in place in 1905 by Theodore Roosevelt.

Elizabeth Baden in the Living Room of The Badens' first home in Chevy Chase, DC

Note the "Mission Style" chair -- this furniture was the latest fashion then!

From the river bank below her home in Southwest Washington, she and her family watched Charles Lindbergh return in triumph up the river in 1927.  Her husband was too old to serve in World War I, but her two sons went off to World War II, served overseas and returned to raise families.

In 1950, after her husband's death, she sold the beautiful house pictured in these pages because she could no longer manage it alone, with her husband dead and her children starting their own families.  It was torn down; the location, at Martin Luther King Avenue and Forrester Street in the Anacostia section of Washington, is now a tough neighborhood with many urban problems.  She moved to The Kenesaw on 16th Street, and later to The Brittany on upper Connecticut Avenue; only when she was 85 years old did she move in with her daughter for her last years.

Bess Barbour in 1913 with Jim and Hattie Baden

As a girl she rode horses in the Virginia countryside where she met her husband in what is now Vienna.  At the end of her life she saw Americans land on the moon.  More than anyone else, she is responsible for passing on to her children and grandchildren a lifetime of priceless memories and experiences that they still treasure today.

What was she like?  Personal Reminiscences from Tom Parker, Grandson