Florence Treadwell Boynton

Florence "Mina" Treadwell was born in San Francisco in 1876, the daughter of miner and inventor John Bartlett Treadwell[2] and Mary "May" Sulgwynn Wentworth Treadwell; the family understood May Wentworth to be the daughter of inventor Isaac Singer.[3] Florence Treadwell was raised in Oakland, where she and Isadora Duncan were close friends from girlhood.[4][5]

Temple of Wings, interior (c. 1915)

Treadwell taught music and dance, and opened a dance studio in her Berkeley home, called the Temple of Wings[6] or Temple of Winds,[7][8] inspired by Isadora Duncan's work.[4][5][9] She started four seasonal dance festivals. She promoted "Open Air Motherhood", a parenting philosophy that maximized children's outdoor time, beginning with outdoor birth,[1] with attended reforms in clothing,[10] footwear, diet, and education.[11] "It is not necessary that all women of a country be mothers," she said in 1911. "But it is necessary that all the children of a country be mothered and cared for in the best possible way".[12]

Florence Treadwell was engaged to Augustin Duncan and William Randolph Hearst before she married attorney Charles Calvin Boynton.[3] They had eight children together.[13] Her husband died in 1960, and she died in Berkeley, in 1962, at the age of 85.[14] Her home and studio, the Temple of Wings, is listed in the California State Historic Resources Inventory, and in 1991 was designated City of Berkeley Landmark.[7][15][16]