Aunt Agnes is the nomenclature that multiple generations have referred to the lady, Delilah Agnes Rouget DeLisle (1862-1940). Born as the youngest daughter and child to Jeremiah and Eleanor Caroline (Smith) Liles in the Kenton area of Hardin County, Ohio. Agnes was also the granddaughter of Lemuel Liles (1779-1874), a veteran of the war of 1812, whom had settled in Northwood, in Logan County after he had made a tour of the United States, having earlier run away in 1790 at the age of 13 from his father's plantation near Raleigh, North Carolina. {Note: Lemuel hid his father's name distancing himself from his paternal line}
From a 21st century perspective Agnes' father Jeremiah Liles (1817-1891) was a renaissance man, a Civil War veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic (As was his father Lemuel and other brothers to preserve the Union and also to end slavery) whom was known to have the largest personal library in Hardin County, Ohio and for tending to his blooming beds of flowers. {Note: large personal libraries at this time may have only been a dozen books}
Agnes was known to have raised some of her brother's children and at the age of 33 married her first cousin Dr. Justin Liles (1859-1911), when he was age 36. Justin was a native of Urbana, in Champlain county Ohio whose parent's later lived in Springfield and where Justin was active with the Masonic Lodge neighboring their home on West High Street. Justin had graduated in 1882 from Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that the cousins Agnes and Justin married in the year 1895. Agnes listed on some documents that she was a native of North Carolina, which may have been an attempt to distance her relationship to Justin on the marriage application. The two were devoted to one another, and did not have children.
Medical doctors at this time were also pharmacists and Justin's research landed him in the laboratory of Dr. Elie Metchinikoff at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1893 through 1903. It was there that Justin discovered a bacillus that was accepted in 1899 as the source of the dreaded disease syphilis. {Note later this discovery was superseded by the discovery of the spirochete and science continues to evolve to more specifics} Justin was awarded a 33rd degree status with the Masons and became a Master of the Lodge in Springfield, Ohio that remained as one of his and Agnes' residences besides addresses in Manhattan and Paris. His papers on the diagnosis of Syphilis are among the publications of the American journal, Index Medicus.
Agnes' was Justin's constant companion and after her husband's sudden passing in Paris August 1, 1911, she escorted his remains home aboard the S.S. La Lorraine (built in 1899 by CGT for the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French line) leaving Le Harve, France on August 5th and heading to Springfield and the interment of Justin's remains in the Oakdale Cemetery in his native Urbana, Ohio.
Her passports note that she lived in Paris from 1901 through 1904 and again from 1911 through 1914 and also from 1919 through 1921.
Her 1921 passport application lists that she planned to travel to the British Isles, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Norway and Sweden.
Agnes lived mostly in Manhattan and as noted traveled extensively. In 1925 while staying in Coronado in Southern California she is noted in newspapers as having hosted a luncheon at the Coronado Hotel for Lady Mountbatten with whom Agnes claimed some relationship with Lord Mountbatten. She also attended a function that same week in July 1925 with the son and daughter in law of the 18th American President, Ulysses S. Grant Jr. at their San Diego home. In the days before WWII Agnes had sailed from Ethiopia around the tip of South Africa (perhaps South American too as noted in her letter) before WWII on the Queen of the North German Lloyd fleet, the SS Columbus. She wrote from the American Woman's Club:
"My 'Ethiopia' trip around South America which in these few words, was one of the happiest times of my life. I was not sick a minute nor unhappy a second and was considered along with my forty year old pal. The champion marathon aboard the SS Columbus. She came from Bayridge Long Island and took me in her car the day before the 4th to dinner and a long drive. Supper at her home and back to the club at 10 PM. She said: You are the only one I would walk with. Of course you realize darling that I dodged the years and I am now in hiding. So you keep away from that book. It's not time!!!!"
Her 1938 passport noted she had blue eyes and stood at 5' 6.5" with light brown hair. Her birthday on this document seems most correct noting as the family records kept by her father as born 21, July, but 1869, rather that her father's 1862 entry. Agnes' 1921 passport application also had her 1869 birthday. Both noted her birthplace as Kenton, Ohio.
Agnes' Manhattan homes in the Columbus Circle neighborhood when a widow, were shared with the only child of her brother Logan (1864-1932); Avis DeLisle (1896-1972). Logan Liles had been a clothing designer after leaving the family home in Kenton, Ohio and had worked in Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. In Chicago Logan Liles had married his wife, a Pratt whom was Jewish originally from Canada. The couple's only child Avis was affected by polio and worked as a school teacher in New York City and also as an operator but became Agnes' companion. Avis joined Agnes in Europe sailing across the Atlantic during the hard times of the Great Depression and aboard the USS President Harding in August 1934 and back to New York from Le Harve on the SS Champlain in September that year.
Agnes listed her permanent address on legal documents as that of her Wall Street attorney. There may have been some relationship with her counsel as she paid for both of his son's college educations and they were beneficiaries in her will. Her Jewish niece seems to have been the grand benefactor of Agnes' estate as Avis DeLisle lived quite well in Santa Barbara until her passing.
Agnes' passport lists her occupation as a writer, and oral history tell she wrote for the steamship lines on which she traveled. Her own letters note of articles published in foreign publications. Agnes was most interested in the Basques of Northern Spain and her heirs thought they may have been the focus of her research. She or Justin compiled a four hundred year history of their common ancestry and some of this remains in a 1945 report by the granddaughter of her nephew Clark Lisle (1876-1952). In that Agnes claimed her ancestry originated in Spain and went to France and eventually to the Caribbean isle of Martinique before immigrating to the north American continent during the colonial period. Justin and Agnes took on the Francophile spelling of their surname DeLisle and further amended to include the author of the French National Anthem, Le Marseilles, when making a kinship to Rouget DeLisle. Though the brothers, Justin's father and Agnes' father, had both originally spelled their surname as Liles, Justin's father changed his spelling to Lisle as did Agnes' nephew Edward Clark Lisle and her brother Logan to DeLisle. Justin and Agnes' history differs from the narrative of the Liles/Lisles that are also descendants to the runaway child Lemuel that claim their ancestry to New York and Wales. [Interestingly my mother's DNA follows the trek that Agnes and Justin charted in their family history]
Agnes returned home to the United States as war loomed once again in Europe and at age 75 seems to have made her final voyage on the SS Columbus February 5th through March 24th 1938. Her last address in Manhattan was 353 West 57th Street, a twenty four story building overlooking Central Park that had opened in 1929. This was the American Woman's Club and in a letter dated July 28, 1938 wrote:
"This club is most ideal for such as myself This No man's land has everything that any woman could desire. Were it not so comfortable I would leave."
She wrote to a niece in 1939 from the club in January 1939:
"Well if you promise to forgive me and I know you with when you know what a long race your auntie has had with hateful old death. I am not so sure of having out-run him yet. He has made me a Shut-In for four months. Except for the big solarium from where I am writing and where I come to absorb the curative rays of the sol and the roof garden outside upon which one can walk and walk and walk, I do not know what I should have done."
Agnes wrote from Tarry Town on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, twenty-five miles north of mid Manhattan in April 1940:
"Soon I shall resume my literary work, You have no idea how much I love it…… I am imprisoned with snow-white snow that I do not like. It is quite enough to be in the country surrounded by green. I detest snow. Are you surprised!"
Agnes' final days were in an assisted living home on the banks of the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County in New York. She was listed there in the census of 1940 and having been a resident in Paris five years earlier for 1935. She died in Dobbs Ferry in October 1940 and her ashes were interred with her late husbands grave in the Oakdale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio.
Her unpublished novel, The Thirteenth Vibration is in the collections of the University of Nevada, Reno which they acquired in 1987. Previous provenance unknown. Her passport was also sold on ebay.
Agnes Rouget DeLisle had earlier visited the Hammond, Indiana home of this writer and vignettes of the family icon have been immortalized in the novel Toys in the Closet (Page Publishing, New York 2015) and the forthcoming sequel, Lewry Lurie.
From a 21st century perspective Agnes' father Jeremiah Liles (1817-1891) was a renaissance man, a Civil War veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic (As was his father Lemuel and other brothers to preserve the Union and also to end slavery) whom was known to have the largest personal library in Hardin County, Ohio and for tending to his blooming beds of flowers. {Note: large personal libraries at this time may have only been a dozen books}
Agnes was known to have raised some of her brother's children and at the age of 33 married her first cousin Dr. Justin Liles (1859-1911), when he was age 36. Justin was a native of Urbana, in Champlain county Ohio whose parent's later lived in Springfield and where Justin was active with the Masonic Lodge neighboring their home on West High Street. Justin had graduated in 1882 from Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that the cousins Agnes and Justin married in the year 1895. Agnes listed on some documents that she was a native of North Carolina, which may have been an attempt to distance her relationship to Justin on the marriage application. The two were devoted to one another, and did not have children.
Medical doctors at this time were also pharmacists and Justin's research landed him in the laboratory of Dr. Elie Metchinikoff at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1893 through 1903. It was there that Justin discovered a bacillus that was accepted in 1899 as the source of the dreaded disease syphilis. {Note later this discovery was superseded by the discovery of the spirochete and science continues to evolve to more specifics} Justin was awarded a 33rd degree status with the Masons and became a Master of the Lodge in Springfield, Ohio that remained as one of his and Agnes' residences besides addresses in Manhattan and Paris. His papers on the diagnosis of Syphilis are among the publications of the American journal, Index Medicus.
Agnes' was Justin's constant companion and after her husband's sudden passing in Paris August 1, 1911, she escorted his remains home aboard the S.S. La Lorraine (built in 1899 by CGT for the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French line) leaving Le Harve, France on August 5th and heading to Springfield and the interment of Justin's remains in the Oakdale Cemetery in his native Urbana, Ohio.
Her passports note that she lived in Paris from 1901 through 1904 and again from 1911 through 1914 and also from 1919 through 1921.
Her 1921 passport application lists that she planned to travel to the British Isles, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Norway and Sweden.
Agnes lived mostly in Manhattan and as noted traveled extensively. In 1925 while staying in Coronado in Southern California she is noted in newspapers as having hosted a luncheon at the Coronado Hotel for Lady Mountbatten with whom Agnes claimed some relationship with Lord Mountbatten. She also attended a function that same week in July 1925 with the son and daughter in law of the 18th American President, Ulysses S. Grant Jr. at their San Diego home. In the days before WWII Agnes had sailed from Ethiopia around the tip of South Africa (perhaps South American too as noted in her letter) before WWII on the Queen of the North German Lloyd fleet, the SS Columbus. She wrote from the American Woman's Club:
"My 'Ethiopia' trip around South America which in these few words, was one of the happiest times of my life. I was not sick a minute nor unhappy a second and was considered along with my forty year old pal. The champion marathon aboard the SS Columbus. She came from Bayridge Long Island and took me in her car the day before the 4th to dinner and a long drive. Supper at her home and back to the club at 10 PM. She said: You are the only one I would walk with. Of course you realize darling that I dodged the years and I am now in hiding. So you keep away from that book. It's not time!!!!"
Her 1938 passport noted she had blue eyes and stood at 5' 6.5" with light brown hair. Her birthday on this document seems most correct noting as the family records kept by her father as born 21, July, but 1869, rather that her father's 1862 entry. Agnes' 1921 passport application also had her 1869 birthday. Both noted her birthplace as Kenton, Ohio.
Agnes' Manhattan homes in the Columbus Circle neighborhood when a widow, were shared with the only child of her brother Logan (1864-1932); Avis DeLisle (1896-1972). Logan Liles had been a clothing designer after leaving the family home in Kenton, Ohio and had worked in Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. In Chicago Logan Liles had married his wife, a Pratt whom was Jewish originally from Canada. The couple's only child Avis was affected by polio and worked as a school teacher in New York City and also as an operator but became Agnes' companion. Avis joined Agnes in Europe sailing across the Atlantic during the hard times of the Great Depression and aboard the USS President Harding in August 1934 and back to New York from Le Harve on the SS Champlain in September that year.
Agnes listed her permanent address on legal documents as that of her Wall Street attorney. There may have been some relationship with her counsel as she paid for both of his son's college educations and they were beneficiaries in her will. Her Jewish niece seems to have been the grand benefactor of Agnes' estate as Avis DeLisle lived quite well in Santa Barbara until her passing.
Agnes' passport lists her occupation as a writer, and oral history tell she wrote for the steamship lines on which she traveled. Her own letters note of articles published in foreign publications. Agnes was most interested in the Basques of Northern Spain and her heirs thought they may have been the focus of her research. She or Justin compiled a four hundred year history of their common ancestry and some of this remains in a 1945 report by the granddaughter of her nephew Clark Lisle (1876-1952). In that Agnes claimed her ancestry originated in Spain and went to France and eventually to the Caribbean isle of Martinique before immigrating to the north American continent during the colonial period. Justin and Agnes took on the Francophile spelling of their surname DeLisle and further amended to include the author of the French National Anthem, Le Marseilles, when making a kinship to Rouget DeLisle. Though the brothers, Justin's father and Agnes' father, had both originally spelled their surname as Liles, Justin's father changed his spelling to Lisle as did Agnes' nephew Edward Clark Lisle and her brother Logan to DeLisle. Justin and Agnes' history differs from the narrative of the Liles/Lisles that are also descendants to the runaway child Lemuel that claim their ancestry to New York and Wales. [Interestingly my mother's DNA follows the trek that Agnes and Justin charted in their family history]
Agnes returned home to the United States as war loomed once again in Europe and at age 75 seems to have made her final voyage on the SS Columbus February 5th through March 24th 1938. Her last address in Manhattan was 353 West 57th Street, a twenty four story building overlooking Central Park that had opened in 1929. This was the American Woman's Club and in a letter dated July 28, 1938 wrote:
"This club is most ideal for such as myself This No man's land has everything that any woman could desire. Were it not so comfortable I would leave."
She wrote to a niece in 1939 from the club in January 1939:
"Well if you promise to forgive me and I know you with when you know what a long race your auntie has had with hateful old death. I am not so sure of having out-run him yet. He has made me a Shut-In for four months. Except for the big solarium from where I am writing and where I come to absorb the curative rays of the sol and the roof garden outside upon which one can walk and walk and walk, I do not know what I should have done."
Agnes wrote from Tarry Town on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, twenty-five miles north of mid Manhattan in April 1940:
"Soon I shall resume my literary work, You have no idea how much I love it…… I am imprisoned with snow-white snow that I do not like. It is quite enough to be in the country surrounded by green. I detest snow. Are you surprised!"
Agnes' final days were in an assisted living home on the banks of the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County in New York. She was listed there in the census of 1940 and having been a resident in Paris five years earlier for 1935. She died in Dobbs Ferry in October 1940 and her ashes were interred with her late husbands grave in the Oakdale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio.
Her unpublished novel, The Thirteenth Vibration is in the collections of the University of Nevada, Reno which they acquired in 1987. Previous provenance unknown. Her passport was also sold on ebay.
Agnes Rouget DeLisle had earlier visited the Hammond, Indiana home of this writer and vignettes of the family icon have been immortalized in the novel Toys in the Closet (Page Publishing, New York 2015) and the forthcoming sequel, Lewry Lurie.
Aunt Agnes is the nomenclature that multiple generations have referred to the lady, Delilah Agnes Rouget DeLisle (1862-1940). Born as the youngest daughter and child to Jeremiah and Eleanor Caroline (Smith) Liles in the Kenton area of Hardin County, Ohio. Agnes was also the granddaughter of Lemuel Liles (1779-1874), a veteran of the war of 1812, whom had settled in Northwood, in Logan County after he had made a tour of the United States, having earlier run away in 1790 at the age of 13 from his father's plantation near Raleigh, North Carolina. {Note: Lemuel hid his father's name distancing himself from his paternal line}
From a 21st century perspective Agnes' father Jeremiah Liles (1817-1891) was a renaissance man, a Civil War veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic (As was his father Lemuel and other brothers to preserve the Union and also to end slavery) whom was known to have the largest personal library in Hardin County, Ohio and for tending to his blooming beds of flowers. {Note: large personal libraries at this time may have only been a dozen books}
Agnes was known to have raised some of her brother's children and at the age of 33 married her first cousin Dr. Justin Liles (1859-1911), when he was age 36. Justin was a native of Urbana, in Champlain county Ohio whose parent's later lived in Springfield and where Justin was active with the Masonic Lodge neighboring their home on West High Street. Justin had graduated in 1882 from Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that the cousins Agnes and Justin married in the year 1895. Agnes listed on some documents that she was a native of North Carolina, which may have been an attempt to distance her relationship to Justin on the marriage application. The two were devoted to one another, and did not have children.
Medical doctors at this time were also pharmacists and Justin's research landed him in the laboratory of Dr. Elie Metchinikoff at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1893 through 1903. It was there that Justin discovered a bacillus that was accepted in 1899 as the source of the dreaded disease syphilis. {Note later this discovery was superseded by the discovery of the spirochete and science continues to evolve to more specifics} Justin was awarded a 33rd degree status with the Masons and became a Master of the Lodge in Springfield, Ohio that remained as one of his and Agnes' residences besides addresses in Manhattan and Paris. His papers on the diagnosis of Syphilis are among the publications of the American journal, Index Medicus.
Agnes' was Justin's constant companion and after her husband's sudden passing in Paris August 1, 1911, she escorted his remains home aboard the S.S. La Lorraine (built in 1899 by CGT for the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French line) leaving Le Harve, France on August 5th and heading to Springfield and the interment of Justin's remains in the Oakdale Cemetery in his native Urbana, Ohio.
Her passports note that she lived in Paris from 1901 through 1904 and again from 1911 through 1914 and also from 1919 through 1921.
Her 1921 passport application lists that she planned to travel to the British Isles, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Norway and Sweden.
Agnes lived mostly in Manhattan and as noted traveled extensively. In 1925 while staying in Coronado in Southern California she is noted in newspapers as having hosted a luncheon at the Coronado Hotel for Lady Mountbatten with whom Agnes claimed some relationship with Lord Mountbatten. She also attended a function that same week in July 1925 with the son and daughter in law of the 18th American President, Ulysses S. Grant Jr. at their San Diego home. In the days before WWII Agnes had sailed from Ethiopia around the tip of South Africa (perhaps South American too as noted in her letter) before WWII on the Queen of the North German Lloyd fleet, the SS Columbus. She wrote from the American Woman's Club:
"My 'Ethiopia' trip around South America which in these few words, was one of the happiest times of my life. I was not sick a minute nor unhappy a second and was considered along with my forty year old pal. The champion marathon aboard the SS Columbus. She came from Bayridge Long Island and took me in her car the day before the 4th to dinner and a long drive. Supper at her home and back to the club at 10 PM. She said: You are the only one I would walk with. Of course you realize darling that I dodged the years and I am now in hiding. So you keep away from that book. It's not time!!!!"
Her 1938 passport noted she had blue eyes and stood at 5' 6.5" with light brown hair. Her birthday on this document seems most correct noting as the family records kept by her father as born 21, July, but 1869, rather that her father's 1862 entry. Agnes' 1921 passport application also had her 1869 birthday. Both noted her birthplace as Kenton, Ohio.
Agnes' Manhattan homes in the Columbus Circle neighborhood when a widow, were shared with the only child of her brother Logan (1864-1932); Avis DeLisle (1896-1972). Logan Liles had been a clothing designer after leaving the family home in Kenton, Ohio and had worked in Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. In Chicago Logan Liles had married his wife, a Pratt whom was Jewish originally from Canada. The couple's only child Avis was affected by polio and worked as a school teacher in New York City and also as an operator but became Agnes' companion. Avis joined Agnes in Europe sailing across the Atlantic during the hard times of the Great Depression and aboard the USS President Harding in August 1934 and back to New York from Le Harve on the SS Champlain in September that year.
Agnes listed her permanent address on legal documents as that of her Wall Street attorney. There may have been some relationship with her counsel as she paid for both of his son's college educations and they were beneficiaries in her will. Her Jewish niece seems to have been the grand benefactor of Agnes' estate as Avis DeLisle lived quite well in Santa Barbara until her passing.
Agnes' passport lists her occupation as a writer, and oral history tell she wrote for the steamship lines on which she traveled. Her own letters note of articles published in foreign publications. Agnes was most interested in the Basques of Northern Spain and her heirs thought they may have been the focus of her research. She or Justin compiled a four hundred year history of their common ancestry and some of this remains in a 1945 report by the granddaughter of her nephew Clark Lisle (1876-1952). In that Agnes claimed her ancestry originated in Spain and went to France and eventually to the Caribbean isle of Martinique before immigrating to the north American continent during the colonial period. Justin and Agnes took on the Francophile spelling of their surname DeLisle and further amended to include the author of the French National Anthem, Le Marseilles, when making a kinship to Rouget DeLisle. Though the brothers, Justin's father and Agnes' father, had both originally spelled their surname as Liles, Justin's father changed his spelling to Lisle as did Agnes' nephew Edward Clark Lisle and her brother Logan to DeLisle. Justin and Agnes' history differs from the narrative of the Liles/Lisles that are also descendants to the runaway child Lemuel that claim their ancestry to New York and Wales. [Interestingly my mother's DNA follows the trek that Agnes and Justin charted in their family history]
Agnes returned home to the United States as war loomed once again in Europe and at age 75 seems to have made her final voyage on the SS Columbus February 5th through March 24th 1938. Her last address in Manhattan was 353 West 57th Street, a twenty four story building overlooking Central Park that had opened in 1929. This was the American Woman's Club and in a letter dated July 28, 1938 wrote:
"This club is most ideal for such as myself This No man's land has everything that any woman could desire. Were it not so comfortable I would leave."
She wrote to a niece in 1939 from the club in January 1939:
"Well if you promise to forgive me and I know you with when you know what a long race your auntie has had with hateful old death. I am not so sure of having out-run him yet. He has made me a Shut-In for four months. Except for the big solarium from where I am writing and where I come to absorb the curative rays of the sol and the roof garden outside upon which one can walk and walk and walk, I do not know what I should have done."
Agnes wrote from Tarry Town on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, twenty-five miles north of mid Manhattan in April 1940:
"Soon I shall resume my literary work, You have no idea how much I love it…… I am imprisoned with snow-white snow that I do not like. It is quite enough to be in the country surrounded by green. I detest snow. Are you surprised!"
Agnes' final days were in an assisted living home on the banks of the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County in New York. She was listed there in the census of 1940 and having been a resident in Paris five years earlier for 1935. She died in Dobbs Ferry in October 1940 and her ashes were interred with her late husbands grave in the Oakdale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio.
Her unpublished novel, The Thirteenth Vibration is in the collections of the University of Nevada, Reno which they acquired in 1987. Previous provenance unknown. Her passport was also sold on ebay.
Agnes Rouget DeLisle had earlier visited the Hammond, Indiana home of this writer and vignettes of the family icon have been immortalized in the novel Toys in the Closet (Page Publishing, New York 2015) and the forthcoming sequel, Lewry Lurie.
From a 21st century perspective Agnes' father Jeremiah Liles (1817-1891) was a renaissance man, a Civil War veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic (As was his father Lemuel and other brothers to preserve the Union and also to end slavery) whom was known to have the largest personal library in Hardin County, Ohio and for tending to his blooming beds of flowers. {Note: large personal libraries at this time may have only been a dozen books}
Agnes was known to have raised some of her brother's children and at the age of 33 married her first cousin Dr. Justin Liles (1859-1911), when he was age 36. Justin was a native of Urbana, in Champlain county Ohio whose parent's later lived in Springfield and where Justin was active with the Masonic Lodge neighboring their home on West High Street. Justin had graduated in 1882 from Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that the cousins Agnes and Justin married in the year 1895. Agnes listed on some documents that she was a native of North Carolina, which may have been an attempt to distance her relationship to Justin on the marriage application. The two were devoted to one another, and did not have children.
Medical doctors at this time were also pharmacists and Justin's research landed him in the laboratory of Dr. Elie Metchinikoff at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1893 through 1903. It was there that Justin discovered a bacillus that was accepted in 1899 as the source of the dreaded disease syphilis. {Note later this discovery was superseded by the discovery of the spirochete and science continues to evolve to more specifics} Justin was awarded a 33rd degree status with the Masons and became a Master of the Lodge in Springfield, Ohio that remained as one of his and Agnes' residences besides addresses in Manhattan and Paris. His papers on the diagnosis of Syphilis are among the publications of the American journal, Index Medicus.
Agnes' was Justin's constant companion and after her husband's sudden passing in Paris August 1, 1911, she escorted his remains home aboard the S.S. La Lorraine (built in 1899 by CGT for the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French line) leaving Le Harve, France on August 5th and heading to Springfield and the interment of Justin's remains in the Oakdale Cemetery in his native Urbana, Ohio.
Her passports note that she lived in Paris from 1901 through 1904 and again from 1911 through 1914 and also from 1919 through 1921.
Her 1921 passport application lists that she planned to travel to the British Isles, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Norway and Sweden.
Agnes lived mostly in Manhattan and as noted traveled extensively. In 1925 while staying in Coronado in Southern California she is noted in newspapers as having hosted a luncheon at the Coronado Hotel for Lady Mountbatten with whom Agnes claimed some relationship with Lord Mountbatten. She also attended a function that same week in July 1925 with the son and daughter in law of the 18th American President, Ulysses S. Grant Jr. at their San Diego home. In the days before WWII Agnes had sailed from Ethiopia around the tip of South Africa (perhaps South American too as noted in her letter) before WWII on the Queen of the North German Lloyd fleet, the SS Columbus. She wrote from the American Woman's Club:
"My 'Ethiopia' trip around South America which in these few words, was one of the happiest times of my life. I was not sick a minute nor unhappy a second and was considered along with my forty year old pal. The champion marathon aboard the SS Columbus. She came from Bayridge Long Island and took me in her car the day before the 4th to dinner and a long drive. Supper at her home and back to the club at 10 PM. She said: You are the only one I would walk with. Of course you realize darling that I dodged the years and I am now in hiding. So you keep away from that book. It's not time!!!!"
Her 1938 passport noted she had blue eyes and stood at 5' 6.5" with light brown hair. Her birthday on this document seems most correct noting as the family records kept by her father as born 21, July, but 1869, rather that her father's 1862 entry. Agnes' 1921 passport application also had her 1869 birthday. Both noted her birthplace as Kenton, Ohio.
Agnes' Manhattan homes in the Columbus Circle neighborhood when a widow, were shared with the only child of her brother Logan (1864-1932); Avis DeLisle (1896-1972). Logan Liles had been a clothing designer after leaving the family home in Kenton, Ohio and had worked in Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. In Chicago Logan Liles had married his wife, a Pratt whom was Jewish originally from Canada. The couple's only child Avis was affected by polio and worked as a school teacher in New York City and also as an operator but became Agnes' companion. Avis joined Agnes in Europe sailing across the Atlantic during the hard times of the Great Depression and aboard the USS President Harding in August 1934 and back to New York from Le Harve on the SS Champlain in September that year.
Agnes listed her permanent address on legal documents as that of her Wall Street attorney. There may have been some relationship with her counsel as she paid for both of his son's college educations and they were beneficiaries in her will. Her Jewish niece seems to have been the grand benefactor of Agnes' estate as Avis DeLisle lived quite well in Santa Barbara until her passing.
Agnes' passport lists her occupation as a writer, and oral history tell she wrote for the steamship lines on which she traveled. Her own letters note of articles published in foreign publications. Agnes was most interested in the Basques of Northern Spain and her heirs thought they may have been the focus of her research. She or Justin compiled a four hundred year history of their common ancestry and some of this remains in a 1945 report by the granddaughter of her nephew Clark Lisle (1876-1952). In that Agnes claimed her ancestry originated in Spain and went to France and eventually to the Caribbean isle of Martinique before immigrating to the north American continent during the colonial period. Justin and Agnes took on the Francophile spelling of their surname DeLisle and further amended to include the author of the French National Anthem, Le Marseilles, when making a kinship to Rouget DeLisle. Though the brothers, Justin's father and Agnes' father, had both originally spelled their surname as Liles, Justin's father changed his spelling to Lisle as did Agnes' nephew Edward Clark Lisle and her brother Logan to DeLisle. Justin and Agnes' history differs from the narrative of the Liles/Lisles that are also descendants to the runaway child Lemuel that claim their ancestry to New York and Wales. [Interestingly my mother's DNA follows the trek that Agnes and Justin charted in their family history]
Agnes returned home to the United States as war loomed once again in Europe and at age 75 seems to have made her final voyage on the SS Columbus February 5th through March 24th 1938. Her last address in Manhattan was 353 West 57th Street, a twenty four story building overlooking Central Park that had opened in 1929. This was the American Woman's Club and in a letter dated July 28, 1938 wrote:
"This club is most ideal for such as myself This No man's land has everything that any woman could desire. Were it not so comfortable I would leave."
She wrote to a niece in 1939 from the club in January 1939:
"Well if you promise to forgive me and I know you with when you know what a long race your auntie has had with hateful old death. I am not so sure of having out-run him yet. He has made me a Shut-In for four months. Except for the big solarium from where I am writing and where I come to absorb the curative rays of the sol and the roof garden outside upon which one can walk and walk and walk, I do not know what I should have done."
Agnes wrote from Tarry Town on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, twenty-five miles north of mid Manhattan in April 1940:
"Soon I shall resume my literary work, You have no idea how much I love it…… I am imprisoned with snow-white snow that I do not like. It is quite enough to be in the country surrounded by green. I detest snow. Are you surprised!"
Agnes' final days were in an assisted living home on the banks of the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County in New York. She was listed there in the census of 1940 and having been a resident in Paris five years earlier for 1935. She died in Dobbs Ferry in October 1940 and her ashes were interred with her late husbands grave in the Oakdale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio.
Her unpublished novel, The Thirteenth Vibration is in the collections of the University of Nevada, Reno which they acquired in 1987. Previous provenance unknown. Her passport was also sold on ebay.
Agnes Rouget DeLisle had earlier visited the Hammond, Indiana home of this writer and vignettes of the family icon have been immortalized in the novel Toys in the Closet (Page Publishing, New York 2015) and the forthcoming sequel, Lewry Lurie.
Gravesite Details
Wife of Dr. Justin Rouget DeLisle, her cousin who she had served as a constant companion, devoted and beloved wife.
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