Lady Randolph Churchill
American-born British mother of Winston Churchill (1854–1921)
Jennie Jerome Churchill (born Jeanette Jerome; later Mrs. Cornwallis-West; 9 January 1854 – 29 June 1921), known as Lady Randolph Spencer-Churchill, was an American-born British socialite, the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, and the mother of British prime minister Winston Churchill.
Jennie published her memoirs in 1908. In 1909, her theatrical play His Borrowed Plumes debuted in The Globe Theatre. Although Mrs Patrick Campbell produced and took the lead role in the play, it was a commercial failure. Jennie served as the chair of the hospital committee for the American Women's War Relief Fund, starting in 1914. Her organization helped fund and staff two hospitals during World War I.
Early life
Jeanette Jerome was born in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn in 1854, the second of four daughters (one died in childhood) of financier, sportsman, and speculator Leonard Jerome and his wife Clarissa "Clara", daughter of Ambrose Hall, a landowner. Jerome's father was of Huguenot extraction, his forebears having emigrated to America from the Isle of Wight in 1710. Hall family lore insists that Jennie had Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) ancestry through her maternal grandmother; however, there is no research or evidence to corroborate this.
She was raised in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Paris and London.
“Lady Randolph Churchill” enters the record as american-born British mother of Winston Churchill (1854–1921). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lady, Randolph and Churchill can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lady Randolph Churchill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.