for espionage but backed down because of the publicity, charges he was persecuting his enemies, and the likelihood of an acquittal (since the Navy's own censors had twice cleared the story before it was published). During World War II, she and her brother were accused of being Nazi sympathizers. Representative Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania said on the floor of the United States House of Representatives that the Pattersons "would welcome the victory of Hitler." Family difficulties She feuded with her daughter, who publicly "divorced" her in 1945, and with her former son-in-law, Drew Pearson, by whom she had a granddaughter, Ellen Cameron Pearson Arnold (1926–2010). An alcoholic for most of her adult life, she died of a heart attack at age 66 at Mount Airy. She left the paper to seven of her editors who within the year sold it to her cousin Colonel McCormick. He held onto the paper for five years, and although for several years he seemed close to returning it to profitability, it eventually proved too great a financial drain. After quietly sounding out several other publishers, McCormick opted to sell the paper to the rival Post, which promptly closed it. As Countess Gizycki, Patterson was a frequent visitor to her ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the 1920s where Donald Hough records an unexpected aspect of her personality: the ability to speak effectively to horses in language worthy of a native cowboy. The Flat Creek Ranch is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Family tree References Notes Citations Bibliography Further reading Olmsted, Kathryn S. The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler (Yale UP, 2022)online also online review 1880s births 1948 deaths 20th-century American novelists American newspaper editors 20th-century American newspaper publishers (people) American women novelists Burials at Graceland Cemetery (Chicago) Medill-Patterson family Miss Porter's School alumni Writers from Chicago Journalists from Washington, D.C. Old Right (United States) Women newspaper editors 20th-century American women writers Novelists from Illinois American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers