Topic: Edie Sedgwick

Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, socialite, model, and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's Muses. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Andy Warhol's short films in the 1960s.

Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California, to Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick, (1904–1967) a philanthropist, rancher, and sculptor. She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn, famously painted, with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps-Stokes, by John Singer Sargent.

Sedgwick's family was long established in Massachusetts history. Her seventh-great grandfather, English-born Robert Sedgwick, was the first Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settling in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1635. Edie's family later originated from Stockbridge, Massachusetts where her great-great-great grandfather Judge Theodore Sedgwick had settled after the American Revolution. Theodore married Pamela Dwight who was the daughter of Abigail (Williams) Dwight, which means that Ephraim Williams, the founder of Williams College, was her fifth-great grandfather. Theodore Sedgwick was the first to plead and win a case for the freedom of a black woman, Elizabeth Freeman, under the Massachusetts Bill of Rights that declared all men to be born free and equal. Sedgwick's mother was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest (President and Chairman of the Board of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and a direct descendant of Jesse de Forest whose Dutch West India Company helped to settle New Amsterdam.) Jesse de Forest was also Edie's seventh-great grandfather.. Her paternal grandfather was the historian and acclaimed author Henry Dwight Sedgwick III; her great grandmother, Susanna Shaw, was the sister of Robert Gould Shaw, the American Civil War Colonel; and her great-great grandfather, Robert Bowne Minturn, was a part owner of the Flying Cloud clipper ship, and is credited with creating and promoting Central Park in New York City. And her great-great-great grandfather, William Ellery, was a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence.