Suzanne Stevenson

Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys (married names Suzanne Farnam, Suzanne Stevenson; May 29, 1898 – March 31, 1973) was a Belgian-American sculptor and political activist, founder and first president of the Minute Women of the U.S.A.

Suzanne Silvercruys was born in Maaseik, Belgium, where her father, Baron Frantz (François) Silvercruys, was a Conseiller (justice) and later president of the Court of Cassation. The family came to the United States in 1915 in flight from World War I; she became a US citizen in 1922. Her brother, Baron Robert Silvercruys, was a poet and professor of French and later the Belgian ambassador to Canada and then for many years to the United States.

In 1917, she was one of 1,500 people present at a dinner in Philadelphia where Secretary of War Newton D. Baker was to speak; when he failed to appear, she was invited to speak instead and described the Rape of Belgium by the invading Germans. She subsequently toured the US and Canada as "the little Belgian girl", publicizing the Belgians' plight and raising a million dollars for relief to them. She received honors from the King and Queen of Belgium, including the Order of Leopold and the Order of the Crown; she was also awarded the British Coronation Medal and was an officer of the French Academy.

Silvercruys originally hoped for a career as a musician; she became interested in sculpture when she was ill with tuberculosis and a friend gave her some modeling clay; she sculpted her dog's head. She graduated from the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1928 and worked as a sculptor, mainly producing portraits of famous people; she also painted portraits. She had a one-person sculpture show in New York in 1930. She also lectured on sculpture, often sculpting one or more members of the audience, and taught the first college class in sculpture at Wichita Falls, Texas. In the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she represented Belgium as a sculptor in the art competition.

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