Jessie 2

The Beautiful Idealist

During her years at Barnard, Jessie met Rowland Holbrook Smith, the son of a successful New York merchant. They married, and he went on to thrive in the cosmetics industry as the creator of Djer-Kiss face powder. He died suddenly at age 40, leaving a widow and three children.

Jessie was said to be “a woman whose outward beauty reflected her inner religious strength, and her love and faith in her fellowmen.” She was also described as a beautiful woman “full of idealism about everything” who “cared enormously about people” and “the future.”

In 1926, she married a long-time friend of her late husband’s – the widower Charles F. Noyes, whose first wife, Eleanora Halsted, had died in 1920.

At age 41, Jessie Smith Noyes was indefatigable. Her classic beauty and warm personality drew people to her, but it was her strong sense of social justice that appealed most to people, enabling her to advance the causes she truly believed in. As vice president of the Brooklyn YWCA, which was founded in 1888 and was one of the first YWCAs in the United States, Mrs. Noyes was clearly ahead of her time in working tirelessly for religious tolerance and racial equality long before equal rights became a national issue.