Jennie[lower-alpha 1] Jerome was born in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn in 1854,[1] the second of four daughters (one died in childhood) of financier, sportsman, and speculator Leonard Jerome and his wife Clarissa (always called Clara[2]), daughter of Ambrose Hall, a landowner. Jerome's father was of Huguenot extraction, his forebears having emigrated to America from the Isle of Wight in 1710.[3] Hall family lore insists that Jennie had Iroquois ancestry through her maternal grandmother;[4] however, there is no research or evidence to corroborate this.[5]