Winnaretta Singer
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Winnaretta Singer, Princess Edmond de Polignac (8 January 1865-26 November 1943) was an American musical patron and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. She was the twentieth of the twenty-four children of Isaac Merritt Singer. Her mother was his Paris-born second wife, Isabella Eugenie Boyer, who was possibly the model for Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty. Winnaretta was born in Yonkers, New York. After the outbreak of Civil War, the Singer family moved to Paris, where they remained until the Franco-Prussian War. The family then settled in England, first in London, and then Paignton, Devon; there, Isaac Singer built Oldway Mansion, a 115-room palace modeled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, which he named "The Wigwam."
