Rutherfurd Stuyvesant or Stuyvesant Rutherfurd (September 2, 1843 – July 4, 1909) was an American socialite and land developer from New York, best known as the inheritor of the Stuyvesant fortune.[1]
In 1847, the six year old Stuyvesant Rutherfurd changed his name to Rutherfurd Stuyvesant to conform with the will of his mother's great-uncle, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, who died childless, in order to inherit the Stuyvesant fortune. His mother was the niece and adopted daughter of Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847),[10] the 2x great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant, and Helena Rutherfurd Stuyvesant.[11][3]
Career
Stuyvesant was known as a very successful land developer of New York City.
In 1869, Stuyvesant hired Richard Morris Hunt to build the "first true apartment building in New York", located on the present day site of 142 East 18th Street near Gramercy Park.[12] The building was a five story walk up built for middle-class tenants.[12]
Society life
Stuyvesant was a collector of arms and armor,[13] fine china and paintings.[1]
His mansion in New York was located at the corner of Second Avenue and 15th Street, near most of the Stuyvesant and Rutherfurd properties.[1]
He had an estate in the country, known as Tranquility Farms, near Hackettstown, New Jersey that was the original Stuyvesant homestead. He enlarged the home which was located on 7,000 acres and included a park stocked with elk, deer, ponds with beavers, and pheasants.[1]
Photograph of his second wife, the former Countess de Wassanaer, c. 1915-1920.
In 1863, he was married to Mary Pierrepont (1842–1879), a daughter of Henry Evelyn Pierrepont (1808–1888)[14][15] and Anna Maria Jay (1819–1902),[16] and a granddaughter of Peter Augustus Jay.[17] She, along with a son, died at the Stuyvesant mansion during childbirth in 1879.
In 1902, he was married to Countess Mathilde Elizabeth Loewenguth de Wassanaer (1877–1948), the daughter of Joseph Loewenguth, at St. George's Chapel on Albemarle Street in London.[18] She was the widow of a Dutch Count.[1] Together, they were the parents of:
Lewis Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1903–1944),[19] who married Rosalie Stuyvesant Pillot in 1925, daughter of Peter Stuyvesant Pillot. The couple had one child, Peter Winthrop Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1935–1970),[20][21] before they divorced in 1930.[22] He later married Elizabeth (née Larocque) Smith in 1934. She was the former wife of Schuyler Knowlton Smith and the daughter of Joseph Laroque.[23]
Alan Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1905–1954), who did not marry. He was injured in a car accident in 1934.[24] He died aboard a ship just short of arriving at their destination to France.[25]
Rutherfurd died suddenly while out for his customary morning walk in the Champs-Élysées in Paris on July 4, 1909.[1][26] After his death, his widow married Prince Alexandre de Caraman-Chimay, the son of Prince Joseph de Caraman-Chimay and brother of Joseph, Prince de Caraman-Chimay. The Princess Alexandre de Caraman Chimay died in 1948 and was buried in the Stuyvesant family plot at Tranquility Cemetery, New Jersey.[27]
^ ab"Lewis Morris Rutherfurd"(PDF). New York Times. June 1, 1892. Retrieved 2014-01-09. Lewis Morris Kutherfurd died on Decoration Day at his home, Tranquillity, N.J., in the seventy-sixth [sic] year of his age.
^Greene, Richard Henry; Stiles, Henry Reed; Dwight, Melatiah Everett; Morrison, George Austin; Mott, Hopper Striker; Totten, John Reynolds; Pitman, Harold Minot; Ditmas, Charles Andrew; Forest, Louis Effingham De; Maynard, Arthur S.; Mann, Conklin (1880). The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. p. 160. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
