Virginia Elena Ortea

Virginia Elena Ortea (17 June 1866 – 1 January 1903), who wrote under the pen name Elena Kennedy, was a journalist and writer, credited as the first Dominican Republic female journalist (to have her own byline) and one of the first women novelists in the country. She was also the writer of the only known zarzuela from the Dominican Republic. There is a street and a school named in her honor in the country.

Early life Virginia Elena Ortea Mella was born on 17 June 1866 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Emilia Mella de la Peña and Francisco Ortea Kennedy, both white Dominicans. Her father was a prominent politician, Governor of the Puerto Plata Province and a writer, who was forced into exile in 1871 to Mayagüez and again in 1878 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her uncle, Juan Isidro Ortea y Kennedy was Vice President of the Dominican Republic under Ignacio María González's administration. Her paternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Francisco Ortea, was a military officer from Asturias, Spain; while her paternal grandmother, Fanny Kennedy, known as La Madama, had lived in Puerto Rico before immigrating to the Dominican Republic. Kennedy was born to a French mother and a British father. Her maternal grandparents, of Spanish heritage, were María Caridad de la Peña and Ildefonso Mella Castillo, brother of the national hero Matías Ramón Mella. She had a brother, Francisco Ortea (1845–1899), and a sister, Luisa Matilde Ortea Mella, who married Antonio Luciano Cocco Dorville (1870–1945) from a Puerto Plata upper-class family.

Ortea began her schooling in Santo Domingo, studied with the noted Dominican teacher José Dubeau in Puerto Plata and finished her education in Mayagüez. She also studied music in Puerto Rico with José María Rodríguez Arresón, who would later write the music to her zarzuela and piano and singing with Francisco de Arredondo Miranda.

ahnentafel

boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; 1= 1. Virginia Elena Ortea Mella (1866–1903) 2= 2. Francisco Carlos Ortea Kennedy (1844–1899) 3= 3. Emilia Mella de la Caridad (1846–?) 4= 4. Juan Francisco Ortea 5= 5. Fanny Kennedy 6= 6. Ildefonso Mella Castillo (1818–?) 7= 7. María Caridad de la Peña 10= 10. Mr. Kennedy 11= 11. Mme. Kennedy 12= 12. Antonio Mella Álvarez (1794–1837) 13= 13. Francisca Javier Castillo Álvarez (1790–1864) 24= 24. Manuel Mella Sánchez 25= 25. Juana Álvarez Pereyra 26= 26. José Castillo 27= 27. Úrsula Álvarez footnotes=Sources: These personal interviews were the first of the genre recorded in the country and took place during Jacobito de Lara's imprisonment during 1901 for the killing of his fiancée in a jealous rage. He had previously participated in the assassination of President Ulises Heureaux.