Alumni Virtual Talk with Martie Sanger '56

 

Join us Thursday, March 4, at 12:00 P.M. as we speak with author and historian Martie Sanger ’56! The great-granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick – a controversial American industrialist, philanthropist, and union-buster – Martie has researched and written four books about her ancestors.

 

Her first, the biography Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait, debuted in 1998 and offers new insights into one of the most influential figures from America’s gilded age. Extensively researched through private letters, personal family diaries, and museum archives, the book outlines Frick’s extensive art collection and explores his relationships with his daughter, Helen, and fellow industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

 

Martie’s other works include Helen Clay Frick: Bittersweet Heiress and The Henry Clay Frick Houses: Architecture-Interiors-Landscapes in the Golden Era. In recent years, Martie has fought to preserve the historical integrity of The Frick Pittsburgh and the Frick Collection, art museums and former residences owned by the family.

 

In 2016, she published her most recent book, Maryland Blood: An American Family in War and Peace. A divergence from her Frick research, the book describes pioneer William Hambleton’s arrival on the Eastern Shore in 1657 and outlines his family’s incredible contributions to the United States over the next 350 years. Martie is an eleventh-generation descendant of Hambleton.