Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane

Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane (June 29, 1905 - July 9, 1962) was an American explorer and philanthropist.

Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane and his sister Florence, by Lydia Field Emmet, 1914

Early life

Crane was the son of Richard Teller Crane, Jr., and Florence (née Higinbotham) Crane, and grandson of Richard T. Crane, founder of Crane Co. His maternal grandfather was Harlow Niles Higinbotham.[1]

Career

He is best known for the Crane Pacific Expedition of 1928-1929, which he funded, and which took place aboard his yacht Illyria.[2] The expedition was sponsored by the Chicago Museum of Natural History and staffed by a number of scientists and specialists. It left Boston Harbor on November 16, 1928, stopped at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and then at the Panama Canal. It departed the canal on December 30, 1928, for stops at the Cocos Islands and Galapagos Islands, where it made extensive collections of local fish and birds. It then continued to the Marquesas group, the Tuamotu Archipelago, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Borneo, and onwards, in what was ultimately a circumnavigation of the globe.[3]

Personal life

On the expedition, Crane met Cathalene Isabella Parker Browning (1904-1987), step-daughter of the marine superintendent of the Panama Canal. They married in 1929,[4] at which time he adopted his wife's daughter, Cathalene Parker Browning (1923-2005), from her previous marriage. After the couple divorced in 1940, he disinherited his daughter (she later gave birth to American actor and comedian Chevy Chase),[5] and his ex-wife subsequently married the Austrian painter Rudolf Anton Bernatschke.[6]

Crane remarried in 1955 to Minescule "Miné" Sawahara in a Shinto ceremony in Japan; she later established the Mrs. Cornelius Crane Scholarship at the Juilliard School.

Crane died in July 1962.[7]

Legacy

Cornelius Crane is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard, Sphenomorphus cranei.[8]

References
  1. "R.T. CRANE JR. DIES ON 58TH BIRTHDAY; President of Chicago Company and Noted Philanthropist Is Victim of Heart Disease. CRIEVED OVER EMPLOYES Anxiety for Their Welfare and Worry Over Son's Illness Aggravated His Condition. Started Work In Foundries. Aided French Fliers' Kin". The New York Times. 8 November 1931. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  2. Times, Special to The New York (22 October 1929). "CRANE YACHT RETURNS FROM THE SOUTH SEAS; Reaches Gloucester After 36,000Mile Trip for Field MuseumSpecimens". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  3. Jungle Islands : The 'Illyria' in the South Seas, Sidney Nichols Shurcliff, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1930.
  4. "MRS. C.P. BROWNING WED.; Daughter of Late Rear Admiral Parker Bride of Cornelius Crane". The New York Times. 16 October 1929. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  5. Smith, Dinitia (23 August 1993). "The Chase Is On". New York. New York Media, LLC: 28. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  6. "NUPTIALS ARE HELD FOR MRS. C.C. CHASE; Former Cathalene Crane Wed to Dr. John Cederquist in Christ Methodist Chapel". The New York Times. 15 February 1951. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  7. "CORNELIUS CRANE, EXPLORER, WAS 57; Leader in '28 of Expedition to South Seas Is Dead". The New York Times. 10 July 1962. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  8. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Crane", p. 61).
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