Artist:  C. Chandler Ross, Ridgefield, CT 

C. Chandler Ross studied at Academie Julian, Paris, Italy, Germany. He is known for his floral paintings which were reproduced and published by the New York Graphic Society. He is also renown for his portraits of prominent people. He died in 1952.

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This is a fine oil painting of Jennie Woolworth (née Creighton), who married founder Frank Winfield Woolworth on June 11th 1876.  It is well documented that Frank Woolworth was a lover the arts and commissioned many paintings.  Jennie was the love of his life and he doted on her.
 
The painting dates from 1911 and 1912 when Frank Woolworth was preparing to open The Woolworth Building in New York, then the tallest building in the world. Frank made a concerted effort to be recognised as a society gentleman and merchant prince and part of his campaign included many investments in the arts.
 
 
Jennie Creighton was born in Picton, Ontario, Canada on 1st March 1853, the youngest of ten children of Thomas Creighton. She worked at Moore and Smith Dry Goods Store, doing clothing alterations and serving customers. It was there she met Frank W. Woolworth who was one of the clerks.

She left work at the Dry Goods Store to nurse an ailing Frank Woolworth back to health in 1875. They fell in love and they were married in June 1876. She bore him three daughters.

She supported Frank in the opening of his great five cent store (1879). Family members were early investors in the Woolworth business, with sister Mary Creighton managing one of the stores in the 1880s.

Jennie Woolworth hated the trapping of wealth and became increasingly introspective in the 1900s, wishing Frank would give it all up and spend more time at home.  Rarely seen away from home after 1914, in later life she suffered from senile dementia, accelerated by the early death of her daughter Edna.

On Frank's death in 1919 she became (technically) the richest woman in the world, inheriting $40m, but her mind had gone and she knew nothing about it. She died in a nursing home on 21st May 1924.

Because she died a little more than five years after the death of her husband, under American Law the death duties on the estate (an inheritance by then of $60m) were paid twice—once by the estate of Frank, again by the estate of Jennie—in one of the worst cases of poor financial management on record.

Jennie will be remembered as a shy, warm-hearted woman and a fine wife and mother.  She supported Frank throughout his life, nursing him through several spells of poor health, and encouraging to keep his feet on the ground, spending time with his family.  She built a fine home for the Woolworths and Frank was broken-hearted that despite his fabulous wealth all of the physicians he could buy could not find a cure for her "softening of the brain".

Paul Seaton
Hon. Archivist and Historian to Woolworths Group plc
Woolworths Virtual Museum
http://museum.woolworths.co.uk