It’s well established that the first Great Pyrenees that entered the United States had no less an impressive sponsor than Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, better known in history books as General Lafayette, a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War.  He brought over the first Pyr pair in 1824 which he gave to his friend, J.S. Skinner.

Though Lafayette was neither a consummate politician nor a adept diplomat, he provided enough “glue” between the young United States and France, and it was likely as a diplomat that he may have first seen a Great Pyrenees in the homes of the French nobility, or perhaps in the court of Queen Victoria who was known to have one.

This post, however, discusses not the breed’s first foray into America, but possibly the next time anyone in this country heard much about the breed – the 1930s.

We start with Mary Crane, the daughter of Frank Gilman Allen who served as governor of Massachusetts for a very brief time. Two years after graduating from Wellesley College in 1925, she married Francis Crane. An avid birdwatcher, grower of orchids, and conservationist, Mary (and her husband) became keenly interested in the breed and established the first Great Pyrenees kennel in the United States – Basquaerie Kennels, in Needham, Massachusetts. They exhibited their dogs despite having no ring experience (in one AKC Gazette column, Mary wrote, “Mr. Crane and I took this first dog [Ch. Urdos de Soum] that we had down to Morris and Essex, and we had great expectations. He was in the Miscellaneous Class, of course. We gave the dog a bath in the motel the night before and we filled a WHOLE waste basket with hair! And of course, he was a disgrace to show, talk about learning the hard way.”

Mary would go on to judge the breed internationally and became a leading authority on its history. She wrote three books on the breed including the 500 page The Great Pyrenees Handbook, a collection of statistics and breed records published in 1941.

Mary Crane died in Boston in 1982, and an absolute must read two-part account of the Great Pyrenees in the US written by Amy Fernandez can be read here.

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Image: “A Great Pyrenees With A Lamb” by Lilli Pell is available in different art formats here.