Article: Elizabeth Hart Colt: collector, art patron, and civic leader.

In January 1862 Samuel Colt died in the midst of a wartime expansion that doubled the size of his Hartford, Connecticut, arms factory, which was already the largest private armory in the world. He left his widow, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, one of the wealthiest women in America, with a fortune of almost $3.5 million(1) (the equivalent of about $200 million today). During their five-and-one-half-year marriage the Colts had often spoken about what might be done with so princely a fortune. Their mansion, Armsmear [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED], with its two dozen rooms, artistic conservatory, vast gardens full of sculpture, and greenhouses, was already a testimony to both ...

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