Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome was born December 18, 1824 in New Haven, Connecticut, lived her entire life in Connecticut, and died on April 22, 1910 at the age of eighty-six. Her parents were Hezekiah Gilbert and Rebecca Driggs Gilbert. She studied painting with Emanuel Leutze and became a well-known portrait artist in Hartford during the 1860s and 1870s. She married Nelson Benjamin Jerome on December 8, 1858. They had two daughters before separating in 1887, when she moved back to her family home in New Haven. One daughter, named Jane Gilbert Jerome but known as Jennie G. in her family, was born in Hartford on March 14, 1861. She studied at Hartford Female Seminary in the 1870s and died at the age of twenty-one on May 9, 1887. Her sister, Elizabeth Maude Jerome, was born on November 21, 1864 in Hartford and also attended Hartford Female Seminary in the 1870s. She married Yuan Phou Lee, a Yale-educated scholar and lecturer from Canton, China, on July 6, 1887. They had two children, Jennie Gilbert Jerome and Amos Gilbert Nelson Jerome. She divorced Lee shortly after their son's birth and raised the children with her mother in New Haven. She died on January 10, 1939 at the age of seventy-four. Her son, known as Gilbert Nelson Jerome in his family, was born on November 15, 1889 in New Haven. He graduated with honors from New Haven High School in 1907 and received a Ph.B. in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1910. He also received a Bachelor of Humanics degree from the International YMCA College in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1914. He was involved with the Boy Scouts of America and became the first Scout Executive of that organization in New Haven in 1915. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he volunteered and trained as a pilot. In February 1918 he was commissioned as First Lieutenant, Aviation Section, Signal Officers Reserve Corps and sent for training in Paris, France. He flew a Spad 90 for the 8th French Army and was killed by anti-aircraft fire near Blamont, France on July 11, 1918. He was buried in the German military cemetery near Blamont. His remains were moved to an American military cemetery in Argonne in 1919, then, in 1921, reburied in New Haven. His mother gave a stained glass window in his memory, made by Tiffany and Company, to the Plymouth Congregational Church in New Haven.
From the guide to the Jerome Papers. MS 0762., ca. 1824-1956, 1850-1922, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)
