Meredith Howland

Meredith Howland (March 31, 1833 – April 4, 1912) was an American soldier and clubman who was prominent in New York society during the Gilded Age.

Meredith Howland
Born(1833-03-31)March 31, 1833
Flushing, Queens, New York, U.S.
DiedApril 4, 1912(1912-04-04) (aged 79)
Cannes, France
Spouse(s)
Adelaide Torrance
​
​
(m. 1870; his death 1912)​
RelativesJames R. Roosevelt (nephew)
Joseph Howland (cousin)

Early life

Howland was born in Flushing, Queens on March 31, 1833. He was the son of Louisa Sophia (née Meredith) Howland (1810–1888) and Gardiner Greene Howland (1787–1851), a prominent merchant with the firm G.G. & S.S. Howland (which employed Moses Taylor as a clerk). Among his siblings were Rebecca Brien Howland (first wife of James Roosevelt I[lower-alpha 1]) and Gardiner Greene Howland Jr.[lower-alpha 2] From his father's first marriage to Louisa Edgar, he was the younger half-brother of William Edgar Howland,[lower-alpha 3] Abby Woolsey Howland,[lower-alpha 4] and the Rev. Robert Shaw Howland.[lower-alpha 5]

His paternal grandparents were Joseph Howland and Lydia (née Bill) Howland. His maternal grandfather was Jonathan Meredith. His first cousin was Union Army officer and New York State Treasurer Joseph Howland, the son of his uncle Samuel Shaw Howland, a co-founder of G.G. & S.S. Howland.[lower-alpha 6] The first American Howland ancestor was John Howland, one of the Pilgrim Fathers and a signer of the 1620 Mayflower Compact, the governing document of what became Plymouth Colony.[4]

Career

During the U.S. Civil War, Howland served as a paymaster under Colonel Marshall Lefferts in the Union Army's 7th New York Militia infantry regiment.[5] The 7th Regiment was known as a "Silk Stocking" regiment due to the disproportionate number of its members who were part of New York City's social elite,[6]

Society life

In 1892, Howland was included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times.[7][8] Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.[9]

Personal life

In 1870, Howland was married to Adelaide Torrance (1846–1932),[10] the daughter of Daniel Torrance and Sophia Johnson (née Vanderbilt) Torrance.[11] Adelaide's maternal grandfather was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and her paternal grandfather was merchant John Torrance. Among her siblings were Marie Torrance[12] (who married John A. Hadden Jr.),[13] and Alfred Torrance (who married Louise Post and then divorced so Louise could marry Frederick W. Vanderbilt).[14] The Howlands lived mostly in Paris and Cannes (at the Villa Dubosc),[15] where his wife became known as a prominent hostess (befriending Marcel Proust[16]) and "indefatigable bridgeplayer."[8]

Howland, who did not have any children, died in Cannes, France on April 4, 1912,[17] and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. After his death, his wife remained in France, where she died in 1932.[10][18]

References
Notes
  1. In 1853, Rebecca Brien Howland (1831–1876) married her second cousin, James Roosevelt I (1828–1900), the son of Isaac Roosevelt. Their only child, James Roosevelt Roosevelt (1854–1927), was married to Helen Schermerhorn Astor (the daughter of William Backhouse Astor Jr. and Caroline Schermerhorn Astor). After Rebecca's death in 1876, he remarried to Sara Ann Delano, with whom he had Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future President of the United States.[1]
  2. Gardiner Greene Howland, Jr. (1834–1903), the longtime general manager of the New York Herald, was the father of Maud Howland (1866–1952) who married banker, financier, and philanthropist Percy Rivington Pyne II,[2] and Dulany Howland, who married Marguerite McClure (after Dulany's death, she married Ambassador Ogden Haggerty Hammond, the father of Millicent Fenwick).[3]
  3. William Edgar Howland (1813–1885) became a partner in G.G. & S.S. Howland in 1832, the same year as cousin William Henry Aspinwall (son of John Aspinwall and Susan (née Howland) Aspinwall) joined and the family firm was renamed Howland & Aspinwall.[4]
  4. Abby Woolsey Howland (1817–1851) was married to Frederick Henry Wolcott (1808–1883) in 1838.
  5. The Rev. Robert Shaw Howland (1820–1887), who founded Church of the Heavenly Rest in 1865 on New York's Upper East Side, was married to Mary Elizabeth Watts Woolsey (1832–1864), a sister of Eliza Newton Woolsey (the wife of his cousin Joseph Howland).
  6. Joseph Howland (1834–1886) was married to abolitionist author Eliza Newton Woolsey Howland (1826–1917).
Sources
  1. "J. R. Roosevelt, 73, Dies at Hyde Park; Philanthropist and Trustee of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Victim of Bronchitis – Brother-in-Law of Late Col. J. J. Astor and Half Brother of Franklin D. Roosevelt". The New York Times. 8 May 1927. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
  2. "Percy R. Pyne Dies. Noted Financier. Philanthropist Succumbs at His Summer Home in Bernardsville, N.J., at 72 Years. Bank And Rail Official. He Was Long Active in Many New York Charities and Interested in Explorations. A Native of New York City. Active in Scientific Research". The New York Times. August 23, 1929. Retrieved 2012-09-15. Percy R. Pyne, philanthropist, railroad official, financier and member of a prominent New York family, died here early this morning at his Summer home, Upton Pyne. ...
  3. "Mrs. Howland Weds Ogden H. Hammond". The New York Times. 1917-12-19.
  4. Whittelsey, Charles Barney (1902). The Roosevelt Genealogy, 1649-1902. Hartford, Connecticut: Press of J.B. Burr & Company. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  5. Army List of the State of New York. Congreve, Darwent & Whiteford. 1862. p. 31. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  6. Lukasik, Sebastian Hubert (2008). Military Service, Combat, and American Identity in the Progressive Era. Duke University. p. 84. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  7. McAllister, Ward (16 February 1892). "THE ONLY FOUR HUNDRED | WARD M'ALLISTER GIVES OUT THE OFFICIAL LIST. HERE ARE THE NAMES, DON'T YOU KNOW, ON THE AUTHORITY OF THEIR GREAT LEADER, YOU UNDER- STAND, AND THEREFORE GENUINE, YOU SEE" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  8. Patterson, Jerry E. (2000). The First Four Hundred: Mrs. Astor's New York in the Gilded Age. Random House Incorporated. p. 218. ISBN 9780847822089. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  9. Keister, Lisa A. (2005). Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way. Cambridge University Press. p. 36. ISBN 9780521536677. Retrieved 20 October 2017.
  10. "MRS. MEREDITH HOWLAND | Descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt Stricken in Paris" (PDF). The New York Times. September 16, 1932. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  11. "HADDEN--TORRANCE" (PDF). The New York Times. March 11, 1892. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  12. "Died. HADDEN--Marie Torrance" (PDF). The New York Times. April 2, 1923. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  13. "JOHN A. HADDEN DEAD. | One of the Oldest Members of Union Club Dies in London" (PDF). The New York Times. February 10, 1931. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  14. MacDowell, Dorothy Kelly (1989). Commodore Vanderbilt and his family: a biographical account of the Descendants of Cornelius and Sophia Johnson Vanderbilt. D.K. MacDowell. pp. 56–57. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  15. Social Register, New York. Social Register Association. 1920. p. 346. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  16. Tadié, Jean-Yves (2000). Marcel Proust: A Life. Penguin. p. 167. ISBN 9780141002033. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  17. "Meredith Howland" (PDF). The New York Times. April 6, 1912. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  18. "Mrs. Howland Left Bulk to Cousin" (PDF). The New York Times. September 30, 1932. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
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