Jessie Key Habersham

Jessie Key Habersham Michele (23 December 1885 – 12 November 1910) was a wealthy woman from a prominent and distinguished family from Baltimore, Maryland, who married a Romani man and became a "Gypsy Queen" of her husband's clan.

Life

Jessie Key Habersham was born on 23 December 1885, into a wealthy white family with deep roots in Maryland. Her family were descendants of Francis Scott Key. Her parents were Alexander Wylly Habersham and Alice Cornelia Tilson Habersham. Her father was a millionaire from his career as a banker and broker.

While living as a debutante, Habersham had disappeared on two occasions. The first time she escaped to Europe for several months to live with family friends. The second time was in 1904. She wrote a letter to her father explaining that she found her life stultifying and lacking in excitement and therefore had run away to join a clan of Romani people. Habersham married King Jorgas Michele, the clan's chief, thereby becoming the matriarch of the clan.

On 13 May 1910, Habersham wrote a piece for The Marion Daily Mirror of Marion, Ohio, titled "Why I Left Society to be a Gypsy Queen." She stated that it was her free choice to live with her husband's clan and to reject the "corseted life" of high society.

Death Habersham died on 12 November 1910, at Seton Hospital in Cincinnati, shortly after giving birth to her daughter Lincka. Following her death, newspapers carried sensationalistic and fabricated headlines spreading rumors that she had been sold by her family for $900, kidnapped by Romani people, placed "under hypnotic influence", or otherwise "compelled to be the slave and wife" of her husband. Her father insisted that she had married George Michele out of love.

She is buried at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore. Linkcka died the next year in the care of guardians in Baltimore.