In reading Caroline's autobiography we find a very candid look into the life that she was born into and the adventures that she would later take. Sadly, Caroline does not reflect on how some of these experiences may have shaped her. We know that she began her life in privilege and she ended it as a great philanthropist who was perhaps best known for her generous giving to medical research, and art and education. Also, Caroline donated a large sum of money to the University of Minnesota for the construction of the Cancer Research Institute.
By the time she was four years old Caroline had traveled to Chicago and saw her first play (“Hazel Kirk”) and her first opera (“Faust”). Caroline’s family arrived in Minneapolis after living in Milwaukee for five years, which was a city that brought many misfortunes for the family; her mother was badly burned “while caring for her baby brother.” Also, the family lost two year old Nellie--to what she doesn’t say. And her father had to move the family to Minneapolis in order to gain some relief from his asthma. (It was not uncommon for Minnesota to be a destination for asthma sufferers.)

In about 1896 Caroline took the “Grand Tour” in Europe with her family, which lasted six months. Upon her return home she became engaged to “the only man I ever loved,” and they married in 1897, he 23 and she 21. She does not say how she met him, but one can assume there families ran in the same circles. George Christian’s father was a self taught scholar of nearly every topic imaginable and he became a prosperous Minneapolis miller.

We know Caroline had a great respect for the Christian family, which she married into. There seems to have been an especially close relationship between her and George’s younger brother Henry who had always been very feeble. It is not uncommon to find him referred to as her son—mistakenly of course. Once she even took him on a Mediterranean cruise instead of to school at Yale, per his request. She always spoke fondly of the Christian family and wrote of George’s mother that “In all the world there was no more unselfish and lovely mother in-law than Mother Christian.”

No discussion on Caroline McKnight Christian would be complete without mentioning her travels. She seems to have visited nearly every corner of the globe, from Jamaica to British Columbia, and from Cairo to Switzerland and much of Asia. She writes to her mother and father while she is in Egypt “…as the sun was setting, George and I climbed onto the top of one of the Great Ramses, and we thought that nothing in Egypt--aside from the Pyramids--had impressed us so strongly. There we sat watching the moon rise and the outline of the great figures die away.” Although she does not detail all of her travels with such detail, there are enough recorded in this way that she does seem to see outside of the life of privilege that she had always known. One can’t help but wonder if that isn't what helped her to become such a philanthropic leader—her knowledge of how many treasures and cultures there are in the world, which in the early 1900s is not a vantage point that many would have had.
Later in Caroline’s life she took a cruise around the world on a ship called the “Empress of Britain,” at which point in her autobiography she details for the first time what she is seeing and how it impresses her so. One is able to see into an age that affords one of the last glimpses into a world before globalization.

On an afternoon in 1958, shortly after we had acquired the mansion, Caroline was said to have had a keen sense that she needed to visit her old home at 2303 third avenue south. Caroline walked to Washburn Fair Oaks Park and found herself a bench directly across the street where the master bedroom—her room--would have looked out onto a park bench she would have known well from her window. However, Caroline never went into the museum, she just couldn’t bring herself to look upon her beautiful rooms laden with the county’s treasures. Surely, the woman that donated her home to the MIA and worked so hard for the good of the arts community would have appreciated the mission of the Hennepin History Museum, so we can only hope that each time we put up an exhibit that we stay true to the character of each of her rooms. I believe that were Caroline again to have an opportunity to enter her home in 2007 she would appreciate what we have done. The African-cypress floors still shine, people still crane their necks to view the intricately carved stone ceilings, the grand fireplace still warms our guests, and each room still holds its own individual story. I think we have done Caroline proud.