Mabel (Ganson) Luhan (1879 - 1962)

Born 26 Feb 1879 in Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA

Wife of Antonio Lujan — married 1923 in New Mexico, USA

Died 13 Aug 1962 at age 83 in Taos, Taos County, New Mexico, USA

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Biography

Mabel (Ganson) Luhan is Notable.

• Daughter of Charles Ganson and Sarah (Cook) Ganson.
• Husbands: Karl Evans, Edwin Dodge, Maurice Sterne, Tony Luhan
• Mabel was openly bisexual, having written about it in her memoirs

Her first marriage, in 1900 at the age of 21, was to Karl Evans, the son of a steamship owner. They were married in secret because Charles Ganson did not approve of Evans and later re-married in Trinity church in front of Buffalo society. They had one son. Karl died in a hunting accident leaving her a widow at the age of 23.

Later in 1904 she married Edwin Dodge, a wealthy architect, and they moved to Florence where they lived from 1905 to 1912. There she entertained artists, Gertrude Stein, her brother Leo, Alice B. Toklas, and André Gide, among others.

In mid-1912 the Dodges returned to the U.S. and she began holding a weekly salon in her apartment at 23 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Attendees included Carl Van Vechten, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, "Big Bill" Haywood, Max Eastman, Lincoln Steffens, Hutchins Hapgood, Neith Boyce, Walter Lippmann, and John Reed. Van Vechten took Dodge as the model for the character Edith Dale in his novel "Peter Whiffle."

She became a nationally syndicated columnist for the Hearst organization.

In 1916, Dodge married painter Maurice Sterne.

In 1919 Dodge, her husband, and Elsie Clews Parsons moved to Taos, New Mexico, and started a literary colony there. On the advice of Tony Luhan, a Native American whom she would marry in 1923, she bought a 12-acre property. Luhan set up a teepee in front of the small house and drummed there each night until Dodge came to him. Sterne bought a shotgun with the intention of chasing Luhan off the property, but he was unable to use it, and took to insulting Dodge. In response, she sent Sterne away, supporting him with monthly payments until their divorce four years later.

D. H. Lawrence, the English author, accepted an invitation from her to stay in Taos and he arrived, with Frieda his wife, in early September 1922. He had a fraught relationship with his hostess and wrote about this in his fiction. Dodge later published a memoir about his visit entitled "Lorenzo in Taos" (1932).

Dodge and Luhan hosted a number of influential artists and poets including Marsden Hartley, Arnold Ronnebeck, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una, Florence McClung, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Hunter Austin, Frank Waters, and Jaime de Angulo.

Dodge died at her home in Taos in 1962 and was buried in Kit Carson Cemetery. The Mabel Dodge Luhan House has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is an historic inn and conference center. Actor Dennis Hopper bought the house and lived there for awhile.

The Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers Collection is housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. (a portion is available online)

Sources

• Wikipedia
• findagrave.com
• Lois Palken Rudnick. "Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture." Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

From behind the ancestry.com subscription wall:

• US Census, 1880
• NY State Census, 1892
• US Census, 1900
• U.S., Consular Registration Certificates, 1910 (Villa Curonia, Arcetri, Florence, Italy)
• New York Passenger Lists, 1913
• New York Passenger Lists, 1914
• US, Indian Census, 1925
• US, Indian Census, 1937
• US, Indian Census, 1939
• US Census, 1940