Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt

Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (January 18, 1839 – May 4, 1885) was an American socialite and philanthropist. During the American Civil War, she was a strong supporter of the Confederate States of America. Her parents named her after their best friend, Frank Armstrong, before she was born, not knowing she would be female.

During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, she was "an unrepentant Confederate." Augusta Jane Evans described her as a "zealous Methodist." Cornelius saw this gift as a sign of reconciliation to the South, after he had helped defeat the Confederate States Army with his USS Vanderbilt during the Civil War. In 1869, she married Cornelius Vanderbilt after the death of his first wife, Sophia Johnson (a mutual cousin). He died in 1877, Confederate General Braxton Bragg and his brother, Confederate Attorney General Thomas Bragg, both attended the wedding. An article in the Vanderbilt Political Review about the university's links to slavery notes, "During our research, for example, it was shockingly difficult to find information on Frank Armstrong Crawford’s stance on the Civil War on the Vanderbilt website or in Vanderbilt archives, yet other sources plainly cited her dedication to the Confederate cause."