page_title: Eleanor Elkins Widener
section_title: First marriage
hierarchical_section_title: Eleanor Elkins Widener / First marriage
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Lynnewood Hall taken by George Bezak and released into the public domain.
context_page_description: Eleanor Elkins Widener was an American heiress, socialite, philanthropist, and adventuress best remembered for her donation to Harvard University of the Widener Library‍—‌a memorial to her elder son Harry Elkins Widener, who perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
  Widener later married Harvard professor Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr., a surgeon and explorer.
  She subsequently accompanied Rice on a number of expeditions, including one on which she "went further up the Amazon than any white woman had penetrated" and, purportedly, he was attacked by cannibals.
context_section_description: She was the daughter of Philadelphia streetcar magnate William Lukens Elkins. In 1883 she married George Dunton Widener, son of her father's business partner, thereby "[uniting] two of the largest fortunes in the city. She was known as one of the city's most beautiful women." 
  In later marriage they lived in her father-in-law's 110-room Pennsylvania mansion, Lynnewood Hall. Their children were Harry Elkins Widener, George Dunton Widener Jr., and Eleanor Widener Dixon.
caption: Lynnewood Hall
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