Emily Beale McLean

Emily Truxton (Beale) McLean (1854-1912) was the daughter of Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale (1822-1893) who was a frontiersman, rancher, and military general. He moved the family from Pennsylvania to California, then to Washington, D.C., where they lived in Decatur House across from the White House. In 1884 Emily married John Roll McLean (1848-1916), owner and publisher of the Washington Post and Cincinnati Enquirer. They maintained residences in both Ohio, where John had failed campaigns for Senate and Governor, and Washington, D. C., and beginning in 1890 the McLeans spent much of their summers in Bar Harbor, Maine. Emily died in 1912, the year after her son Edward Beale "Ned" McLean (1885-1941) had bought the supposedly cursed "Hope Diamond" for his wife Evalyn (Walsh) McLean (1886-1947), its last private owner. Superstitious people believed the diamond's curse resulted in Emily's death and that of her close friend, Mrs. Robert Goelet, who was present when Evalyn informed Emily of the diamond's purchase.