In 1896, while serving as First Secretary at the United States Embassy in Rome, Italy, Anderson met Isabel Weld Perkins, a young debutante from Boston who was then on her grand tour of Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Their mutual friend Maud Howe Elliott introduced them to each other on the roof of her home, the Villa Rusticucci in Rome.Maud Howe Elliott, John Elliott: The Story of an Artist, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1930, p. 94. Both Larz and Isabel's families established themselves in America before the American Revolution. The Anderson family had arrived in Jamestown 1634; and the Welds in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632. The Anderson family's wealth was primarily in land and real estate holdings in the midwest, but their resources did not compare to those of the Weld Family.
