Before Her Reign
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The elegant city of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1850
By Megan McKinney
Chicago’s future “Queen” was simply the year-old pre-toddler Bertha Matilde Honoré when the above postcard of her native Louisville, Kentucky, was released in 1850.
Henry Hamilton Honoré
Eliza Carr Honoré
Little Bertha’s attractive parents were descended from old aristocratic Southern families. Her father, Louisville businessman Henry Hamilton Honoré, was from an established Louisville mercantile dynasty, and the family of Bertha’s mother — the former Eliza Carr — had settled seventeenth century Maryland. Bertha’s siblings were a younger sister, Ida Marie, and four brothers, Adrian, Henry, Nathaniel, and Lockwood.
Ida Marie Honoré
Young Ida Marie would also mature to make a “beautiful” marriage,” when on October 20, 1874, she wed Frederick Dent Grant, son of the then current United States President Ulysses S. Grant. Fred would become a Brigadier General in the Regular Army in 1901 and a Major General in 1906. He had also launched a term as United States Minister to Austria-Hungary in 1899.
The young-ish Potter Palmer
The first time her future husband, bachelor Potter Palmer, saw Bertha Honoré was in 1862 when she was entering his Chicago Lake Street store with her mother. Bertha was 13 years old; Potter was 36.
Before Bertha and her mother left his store that morning, Potter decided that one day he would marry the beautiful, graceful girl, and he set about making preparations immediately.
The house in which Bertha Honoré was raised was at 231 South Ashland Boulevard.
That evening, Potter called on Bertha’s father, Henry Hamilton Honoré, in his pillared white Ashland Boulevard villa in the genteel Kentucky colony of Chicago’s West Side. In the district’s hospitable southern tradition, a lantern was lit in the rooftop cupola and the front gate was open.
Potter’s was a social call, but one with a mission, and following pleasantries, he told Mr. Honoré that when Bertha had reached the appropriate age, he would like to call on her. Not only had Potter been struck by Bertha’s beauty, poise and grace, but he also saw in the teenager extraordinary qualities that would mature into making her a superb wife, mother, hostess and companion. And he knew that as the Honorés’ daughter she would receive the upbringing and education to reinforce these traits. H.H. Honoré did not know Palmer well; however, he listened to him that night while saying little himself. In 1867, Bertha, now a strikingly beautiful, self-possessed young woman of 18, graduated from the Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown and was of suitable age for courtship. During the intervening years, Mr. Palmer and her father had been partners in various ventures, and Mr. Honoré felt Potter would make a fine son-in-law, but his wife was not in favor of the marriage. Bertha, who was being courted by virtually all of the city’s eligible young men, paid scant attention to the flowers, gifts and other attentions sent by her much older suitor over the next three years; however, she too had a vision of what was possible for the two of them to achieve together. Therefore, it was Bertha, not her parents, who decided in favor of Potter.
And Following Her Reign
Ken Price
So much of what we know about Bertha Honoré Potter has come through the late Ken Price, who was for nearly four decades Public Relations Director for Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton. When we lost Ken in March 2022, it was not merely the loss of a great friend for so many of us but also of the living authority on one of our city’s towering historic figures. The above photograph was taken of Ken in the marvelous museum he created within the hotel to honor Mrs. Palmer
Featured Image Credit: sarasotamagazine.com
