Doris Ryer Nixon
| Doris Ryer Nixon | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
October 1, 1893 San Francisco, California |
| Died | June 24, 1948 (aged 54) San Francisco, California |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation | Civic Leader |
| Spouse(s) | Stanhope Wood Nixon (m. 1917–45) divorced |
| Children | Lewis Nixon III and Blanche Nixon |
| Parent(s) | Fletcher and Blanche Ryer |
Doris Ryer Nixon (October 1, 1893 – June 24, 1948) was a civic leader, particularly on the home front during World War II. The granddaughter of one of California's first doctors, and daughter-in-law of a shipbuilder and industrialist, she became a national vice-president of the American Women's Voluntary Services (AWVS) during the war.
Nixon's grandfather, Dr. Washington Ryer, was a New York doctor who settled in in the 1840s after serving as an assistant surgeon in General Winfield Scott's campaign in the Mexican-American War. He married Mary Fletcher of Boston in 1862, and they had one son, Fletcher Ryer.Ryer Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is named in their honor. Fletcher and his wife, Blanche, became wealthy pioneer agriculturalists.
She was born on October 1, 1893.
In 1906 she was attending a school in Paris, France.
Fletcher Ryer died in 1911, before reaching age fifty. As Doris reached her early twenties, she and her mother became increasingly involved in the social scenes on the east coast, taking Benjamin Thaw's "cottage" in Newport, Rhode Island, for the summer of 1915. She was formally presented as a debutante in Newport that year. As the Oakland Tribune would write, "Mrs. Ryer has had her eye on several members of the British aristocracy for Doris, but this cruel war, of course, smashed all of her well-laid plans to smithereens." (Her mother would later marry Clifford Erskine-Bolst, a British Conservative Party politician (who was elected to the British House of Commons in 1923 and again in 1931.)
She married Stanhope Wood Nixon January 23, 1917 in New York City. He was the son of Lewis Nixon I, a naval architect who briefly led Tammany Hall, and who was the namesake of Nixon Nitration Works and its home village of Nixon, New Jersey. Stanhope had become a subject of controversy several years before their marriage, after he was arrested for assaulting and seriously injuring a phone company engineer in New Haven following a wine party (an offense for which he was fined but not jailed). Doris and Stanhope were joined the following year by a son, Lewis Nixon III, and in 1923 by a daughter, Blanche Nixon. A second son was born in March 1922 but died two months later.
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