Laura “Lollie” (Edgar) Whittemore, 1868–1950

Laura “Lollie” (Edgar) Whittemore was born on 14 June 1868 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of William Boyce Edgar, a wool grower, and Elizabeth “Bettie” Dorsey (Hopkins) Edgar. William and Bettie had four daughters: Laura “Lollie,” Ethel (Edgar) Allen, Dorothy (Edgar) Bennett, and Elizabeth (Edgar) Pulitzer, who was the second wife of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., the publisher and editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Lollie was the first love of Charles M. Russell, the famed American “old west” cowboy artist. Russell completed three paintings with Lollie as the subject. The first, painted in 1890, was called “Girl in Pink.” The second, “Lollie,” also known as “Lolly, a young Victorian woman,” was painted about 1892. The third artistic endeavor inspired by his muse was completed in 1894 and was entitled “The Capture of Laura Edgar.” This painting was a fantasy portraying Lollie being captured by Indians. However, the romantic relationship between Charles and Lollie was discouraged by her parents, and nothing came of it.

Lollie married Robert Blackwell Whittemore Jr. on 23 April 1890 in St. Louis. He was an insurance broker and the son of Robert Blackwell Whittemore Sr. and Katherine “Kate” (Spain) Whittemore. This couple had at least six children: Edgar, Katherine (Whittemore) Winston, Bettie (Whittemore) Gardner, Robert III, Eunice B. (Whittemore) Brown, and Wayman.

Robert Jr. died on 15 October 1944 in St. Louis from prostate cancer. Lollie died six years later, on 6 August 1950, at the home of her son Robert B. Whittemore III in Long Island, Virginia, of a heart ailment. She had been living with her son for about a year before her death. She is buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis along with her parents and husband.

(For more on Lollie Whittemore, see the author’s much longer article in the Spring 2025 StLGS Quarterly, volume 58, no. 1, p. 23.)

Written by Shirley Wadell
January 2025

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