To their artist friends and colleagues in Manhattan they were known as “The Stetties”: a feminine ménage à quatre made up of Rosetta, who was the matriarch, and her daughters Carrie, Ettie, and Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) ( JAMA cover, April 7, 1993).
(Two other adult children had already married and left the household;
the patriarch, Joseph, had disappeared from the household sometime earlier.) Of the four, Carrie organized and ran the household; in her spare time she designed and built an elaborate dollhouse, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ettie wrote and published novels under the assumed name of Henrie Waste, while Florine, who is probably the most famous of the sisters, painted. In addition to their creative endeavors, all three devoted themselves to the care of their mother until her death in 1935.