Surrounded by lovely, lily-gilded stone lies Elizabeth Holmes Haseltine under the impersonal moniker "Mother." Born in Pittsburgh in 1842 to attorney and businessman Joseph and his wife Esther Holmes Hoge, Elizabeth was also the granddaughter on both sides of two Presbyterian preachers. In 1863 in Pittsburgh, she married Philadelphia-born Charles Haseltine, the scion of an old New England family and the brother of artist William Stanley Haseltine. He was a merchant who left the University of Pennsylvania after two years to start his professional life. Charles' interests are better documented than his wife's; like many upper class men of his day, he was a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Union League, and the Art Club. He was the owner of the international art house, Haseltine Art Galleries, and was known as a prominent international art dealer. Haseltine handled some of Thomas Eakins' early works, including "The Gross Clinic" and "The Agnew Clinic" which were first exhibited at Haseltine Art Galleries.
The Haseltine Gallery used to stand at 1416-18 Chestnut Street.
The couple had three daughters and lived comfortably at 1707 Spruce Street with domestic servants. The middle daughter Elizabeth, "Lillie," died at age 14 and is buried to the left of her mother in the Haseltine plot. Elizabeth died in March 1891 at age 50 of acute laryngitis at a resort in Coronado Beach, CA where she visited the Pacific Ocean for the first time with her husband. It is likely that they stayed at the Hotel del Coronado as the "Del" was completed in 1888. (The Del's founders built the seaside resort in what was a barren landscape to market luxury resort vacations to the Gilded Age bourgeoisie.) The funeral took place in April in Philadelphia at the Second (now First, after a 1949 merger) Presbyterian Church at Walnut and 21st Street, a Henry Augustus Sims design from 1872.
Grave Gardens in the Haseltine Family Plot.
Written by Amy Lambert, current Grave Gardener of Elizabeth Haseltine. "I'm honored to design and grow a tribute garden to dear Elizabeth." The Haseltines are buried in Section L - 44