Cora Crane

Cora Crane, born Cora Ethel Eaton Howarth (July 12, 1868 – September 5, 1910) was an American businesswoman, nightclub and bordello owner, writer and journalist. She is best known as the common-law wife of writer Stephen Crane from 1896 to his death in 1900, and took his name although they never married. She was still legally married to her second husband, Captain Donald William Stewart, a British military officer who had served in India and then as British Resident of the Gold Coast, where he was a key figure in the War of the Golden Stool between the British and the Ashanti Empire in present-day Ghana.

Crane accompanied Stephen Crane to Greece during the Greco-Turkish War (1897), where she was a war correspondent. She is sometimes reported as the first recognized woman war correspondent, but Jane Cazneau covered the Mexican–American War fifty years earlier. After Crane's death, she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1901, where she developed several properties as bordellos, including the luxurious Palmetto Lodge at Pablo Beach; she had financial interests in bars and related venues. In this same period, she regularly contributed articles to such national magazines as Smart Set and Harper's Weekly.

Early life Cora Ethel Eaton Howarth was born July 12, 1868, in Boston, Massachusetts, to John Howarth, a portrait painter, and Elizabeth Holder. According to the 1870 United States census, the family was living in San Francisco when she was five years old. She was educated to lead a life of refinement, socialized with the well-educated of Boston, and gained recognition for her talent in short story writing.

She moved to New York City, where she had a series of adventures and misadventures. To gain freedom from the restriction that unmarried women required chaperones to go out in society, Cora married her first husband, Thomas Vinton Murphy. He was the son of Thomas Murphy, the former Collector of the Port of New York and a New York state politician. The younger Murphy and Cora went into business, running munitions and a gambling house.

Two years later she married Captain Donald William Stewart, the son of Sir Donald Martin Stewart, 1st Baronet, commander in Chief of India for Queen Victoria. She moved with him to England, where she cut a social swath after the fashion of fellow American Jennie Jerome, who had married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874. However, when Captain Stewart was assigned to India, Cora elected to stay in England as what was called an "Empire widow."

After living briefly at the country family estate, Cora had moved to London and entered its society. She soon became involved in a highly publicized affair with the heir of the Chase Bank fortune.

Cora Crane became known as the first female war correspondent when she traveled with Stephen to Greece to cover the Greco-Turkish War (1897) for the New York press. She used the pen name of "Imogene Carter." The couple were divorced shortly after he was acquitted; the divorce decree forbade her using the name McNeill. She reverted to using Crane.

Crane became a regular contributor of articles to leading publications of the country, including Smart Set and Harpers Weekly. Toward the end of her career, she became restless and took on a bohemian lifestyle. She had been planning to return to Europe for its atmosphere and take up her writing again there.

For the last three years of her life, she spent much of her time in Pablo Beach, Florida (now Jacksonville Beach), maintaining a residence in the city of Jacksonville as well. In 1910, she suffered a stroke and later that year she suffered from heat stroke soon after helping push a stranded car out of the sand. She returned to her house and died there on September 5, 1910, aged 45. She is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida.

Legacy Columbia University purchased much of the Stephen Crane papers from Cora Crane's estate. The Crane Collection is one of the largest in the nation of his materials. Columbia University had an exhibit: 'The Tall Swift Shadow of a Ship at Night': Stephen and Cora Crane, November 2, 1995 through February 16, 1996.