Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat dating history

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Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat (1823–1908) was an American author, patron and reformer from Portland, Maine. Sweat received her education in Portland public schools and the Roxbury Latin School. Mussey married Lorenzo De Medici Sweat at age 26 in 1849 and began keeping a journal. Her husband was a lawyer; he graduated from Bowdoin College and served in the United States Senate and Maine House of Representatives. Their home, known as the Sweat Mansion, is now part of the Portland Museum of Art. The Sweats traveled all over the world. She was fluent in French, German, Italian, and Russian. Sweat was an avid philanthropist; she bequeathed their home and an additional 100,000 dollars to the Portland Society of Art to construct a building adjacent to her home for the museum. Many of her donations were to Bowdoin College, where both her husband and her father, John Mussey, graduated. A noted poet, journalist, and author, Sweat wrote the first American lesbian novel, Ethel's Love Life.