Mendocino’s Kelley family’s independent daughter Elise continues one tradition: philanthropy

Throughout her life, Elise Kelley Drexler was not constrained by traditional roles for women. She was born in 1866 and grew up with her three siblings in Mendocino, though she frequently visited her aunt Abigail Blair in San Francisco. She attended Mills College in Oakland in the 1880s, a time when only 2% of American women received a college education.

At 27, she married Louis P. Drexler, a millionaire thirty years her senior. Drexler owned multiple companies and thousands of acres of real estate. Their marriage lasted six years until his death in 1899, leaving Elise widowed, childless, and one of the richest women on the West Coast.