Claimant of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna - Eugenia Smith

I was browsing through some old musty, dusty books and happened upon "Hunt for the Tsar and Files on the Tsar" Going through the pictures and the authors attempt to show how the Tsar's children and the Tsar lived, there was a picture of Eugenie Smith. Whatever happened to her and what if anything became of her claim to fame as "GD Anastasia"?

Luise

Did you know there was an entire book about her? A big thick one? I had it out of the library a long time ago. She wrote it like an autobiography. The by-line even said 'Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaievna" This woman looked NOTHING like Anastasia at all. But I guess she had enough people believing her to have some kind of following.

I just did a 'google' search on her and turned up nothing :-/

Just a suggestion, but you might want to try searching under:

Eugenia Smith Anastasia

I found a number of websites this way.  Spelling her first name as EugeniA instead of EugeniE seems to help.

Thanks, that helped. I found this:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Eugenia%20Smith

One more interesting thing to note here, not meaning to drag the AA thing back up, is that this woman was buried in a Russian Orthodox cemetary, and AA was cremated, which I find suspicious for 2 reasons: someone raised Orthodox would be unlikely to request cremation of their own free will, as AA did, and doing so only added to the case against her, making it look as if she had wanted her remains destroyed to stop any possible tests. Also, remember she was trying to commit suicide when found, another thing a devout Orthodox person is unlikely to do. Just my 2 cents.

That Smith lady didn't look a bit like her!

Eugenia Smith and I were pen pals for a number of years. She passed away several years ago after having lived in Newport, R. I. for some years. My wife and I took our children to meet her while vacationing in that part of the U. S. a couple of years before she died. She certainly presented herself as Anastasia, and some of those close to her said they felt she "believed" she was the grand duchess, whether they did or not. She was a painter and had a large painting in her apartment -signed "OTMA" - that appeared to depict the Romanov children. She was particularly kind to my daughters who were approximately 10 and 14 at the time.

Winston Skinner

Thank you for your story, she sounds like a nice lady and you were lucky to know her!

There is always so much talk about Anna Anderson's claim to fame, but what about Eugenia Smith?  I know absolutely nothing about her, does anyone have any info on her or pics?  Does anyone on this forum believe her?

We had a little thread on her once:

http://hydrogen.pallasweb.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=anastasia;action=display;num=1091485921

She also wrote a book, you can usually find it in a search.

I read her book a while back when I was younger and it brought me to tears. I believed she was the "real" Anastasia until my brain smacked me one and woke me up.
Here are some pictures of her:

Thanks for those pics! I read her book when I was in Jr. high and it seemed so real.

Thanks for those pics! I read her book when I was in Jr. high and it seemed so real.

That was when I read it too. I agree, it did sound so real. There was one part near the end when she was talking about the family walking down some stairs. I don't remember what it was about but I've always remembered that part, lol