Cornelia Bryce Pinchot’s Birthday

Cornelia Elizabeth Bryce Pinchot (August 20, 1881 – September 9, 1960), also known as “Leila Pinchot,” was a 20th-century American conservationist, Progressive politician, and women’s rights activist who played a key role in the improvement of Grey Towers, the Pinchot family estate in Milford, Pennsylvania, which was donated to the U.S. Forest Service in 1963 and then designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

A maternal great-granddaughter of Peter Cooper, founder of Cooper Union, and daughter of U.S. Congressman and Envoy Lloyd Stephens Bryce (1851–1917). She was the wife of Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946).

A founding member of the Committee of 100 and major donor to the education and legal defense funds of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the organization’s first years of operation, she has been described by historians at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as “one of the most politically active first ladies in the history of Pennsylvania.”