Cone sisters

Cone sisters
Claribel Cone, Gertrude Stein, Etta Cone 1903
Born	Claribel - 14 November 1864, Etta - 30 November 1870 Jonesboro, Tennessee
Died	Claribel - 20 September 1929, Etta - 31 August 1949 Baltimore, Maryland
Education	Western Female High School Women's Medical College (Claribel)
Occupation	Art collectors physician/researcher (Claribel)
Spouse(s)	neither married
Children	none
Parent(s)	Herman (Kahn) Cone Helen (Guggenheimer) Cone

Western Female High School

The Cone sisters were Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949) of Baltimore, Maryland. Together they gathered one of the finest collections of modern French art in the United States. They were active as collectors, travelers, and bons vivants during the first decades of the 20th Century.

Their parents were Herman (Kahn) Cone and Helen (Guggenheimer) Cone, who were German-Jewish immigrants. Herman, who had immigrated from Altenstadt in Bavaria (South of Ulm) changed the spelling of his last name from Kahn to "Cone" almost immediately upon arrival in the United States in 1845, perhaps to become more American. Until 1871 the family lived in Jonesboro, Tennessee, where they had a successful grocery business. This is where the first five of twelve children were born, including Claribel and Etta. They then moved to Baltimore, Maryland.

The eldest Cone brothers, Moses and Ceasar [the non-classical spelling is correct], later relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina. They established a textile business they named Proximity Manufacturing Company (long known as Cone Mills Corporation, now a unit of International Textile Group). During World War I the textile mills that "Brother Moses" started would again increase their fortunes.

The two sisters, one with a grander personage and independent, the other garrulous and sociable, lived in adjoining apartments on Eutaw Street in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore for fifty years. They both graduated from Western Female High School. Claribel attended Women's Medical College of Baltimore and graduated in 1890, to become a physician and pathologist. She then worked in the pathology laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, but never practiced clinical medicine though she did teach pathology and continued to study with other European researchers over the next twenty years. Etta was a pianist and managed the family household, more as an implementer of Dr Claribel's ideas. They traveled extensively to Europe together almost yearly on long trips starting in 1901.