Ruth Hannas letters

Ruth Hannas was born on 26 September 1893 in Greeley, Colorado. She met Freida von Richthofen Lawrence in 1923 aboard the "Orbita." She was a teacher in Berkeley, California, and in Greensboro, North Carolina. Ruth Hannas died in January 1976 in Birmingham, Alabama.

A distant relative of the "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen, Frieda von Richthofen was born on 11 August 1879 to an aristocratic family in Metz, Germany. In 1899 she moved to England after marrying Ernest Weekley, a much older man than she; the couple had three children. Frieda met the author D. H. Lawrence in March 1912 and the two eloped to Germany, leaving her children behind. After her divorce from Weekley, Frieda and Lawrence married in 1914.

Lawrence suffered from frail health and the couple travelled widely, leaving post-war England at the earliest opportunity. They eventually settled at Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico. They left New Mexico for Lawrence's health and went to Scandicci, Italy, near Tuscany. After Lawrence's death in Vence, France in 1930, Frieda returned to the ranch at Taos to live with Angelo Ravagli, with whom she had carried on an intermittent affair since 1925. In 1935, Frieda sent Angelo to Vence, to have Lawrence's body exhumed and cremated and his ashes brought back to the ranch. They married in 1950. Frieda died on her 77th birthday in Taos.