Thomas Newbold (New York politician)

Thomas Newbold (May 19, 1849 – November 11, 1929)[1] was an American lawyer, politician, and society leader during the Gilded Age.

Thomas Newbold
Member of the New York State Senate
In office
January 1, 1884 – December 31, 1885
Preceded byHomer A. Nelson
Succeeded byJacob W. Hoysradt
Personal details
Born(1849-05-19)May 19, 1849
New York, U.S.
DiedNovember 21, 1929(1929-11-21) (aged 80)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1880; died 1922)​
RelationsEdith Wharton (cousin)
Parent(s)Thomas Haines Newbold
Mary Rhinelander Newbold
Alma materTrinity Hall, Cambridge
Columbia Law School

Early life

Newbold was born on May 19, 1849. He was the son of Thomas Haines Newbold (1815–1869) and Mary Elizabeth (née Rhinelander) Newbold (1822–1897). Among his siblings was Catherine Augusta Newbold, Frederick Rhinelander Newbold (who served as president of the American Rose Society), and Edith Newbold.[2]

His paternal grandparents were Philadelphia born Thomas Newbold and Catherine (née LeRoy) Newbold, who died in Paris, France in 1835.[2] His maternal grandparents were Frederick William Rhinelander and Mary Lucretia Ann (née Stevens) Rhinelander (daughter of Maj. Gen. Ebenezer Stevens). His uncle was Frederic W. Rhinelander, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his maternal aunt was Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, the mother of Frederic Rhinelander Jones and Edith Newbold Jones, his first cousin who was a novelist and designer better known as Edith Wharton.[2]

Career

Newbold was educated at schools in Poughkeepsie (including the Fen Stanton Vicarage)[3] and Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, receiving a B.A. degree in 1871.[3] He then became a lawyer,[4] studying in the office of Sanford, Robinson & Woodruff, eventually graduating from Columbia Law School in 1874.[3]

In 1883, he was elected on an "anti-bribery platform"[3] to serve as a Democratic State Senator in the 107th and 108th New York State Legislatures,[5] representing the 15th District, which included Columbia, Dutchess and Putnam counties.[6] In 1885, he was selected by the Democrats of the 2nd District, Dutchess County, to represent them at the State Convention.[7] While serving in the State Senate, he became close with then Governor of New York, Grover Cleveland, later the President of the United States.[3] After retiring from the Senate, Newbold served as the President of the New York State Department of Health in the 1880s and 1890s, succeeding Erastus Brooks.[3]

Society life

In 1892, Newbold and his wife Sarah were included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times.[8][9] Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.[10][11] Newbold was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club and the Church.[1]

In 1885, the Newbolds acquired property in Hyde Park, New York,[5] known as Bellefield, adjacent to James Roosevelt's Springwood (both of which are now a part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site).[12] In 1912, the Newbolds hired Beatrix Farrand (the daughter of his cousin Frederic Rhinelander Jones and his wife, Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones) to design a walled residential garden at Bellefield.[13] It is one of the earliest extant examples of Farrand's residential designs, and is one of the only known pairings of works by Farrand and the architects McKim, Mead & White, who remodeled the Newbolds' eighteenth-century house from 1909 to 1911 in the Colonial Revival style.[14]

Personal life
The Newbold's New York City residence, 15 East 79th Street.

On June 2, 1880, Newbold was married to Sarah Lawrence Coolidge (1858–1922),[15] a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson.[16] She was the daughter of T. Jefferson Coolidge, a Boston Brahmin businessman who served as the U.S. Minister to France under President Harrison,[17] and Mehitable Sullivan "Hetty" (née Appleton) Coolidge.[18][19] Together, they were the parents of:[16]

In 1916, he hired McKim, Mead & White to build a new residence for his family at 15 East 79th Street (which today is the Rudolf Steiner School). The architects tore down two identical brownstones and built an Italian Renaissance style palazzo with an arched double-door entrance.[5]

Newbold's wife died at their New York home on December 29, 1922. He died on November 11, 1929 in New York City.[1] He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. After his death, his estate was divided equally among his three children with his eldest daughter Mary inheriting their New York City residence and Bellefield in Hyde Park.[12]

Descendants

Through his daughter Julia, he was the grandfather of Emily Redmond Cross (c. 1914–2006),[26] who married John Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan, a Member of Parliament for Reigate who was the son of the Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan and the Lady Vaughan-Morgan of London,[5] in March 1940.[27]

References
  1. "EX-SENATOR NEWBOLD DIES.; Was in 81st Year--Former Head of State's Health Department" (PDF). The New York Times. November 22, 1929. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  2. "The Newbold parcel called Fern Tor". academic2.marist.edu. Marist College. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  3. The University Magazine, Vol. VIII. 1898. pp. 370–371. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  4. Larionov, Denis; Zhulin, Alexander (1884). Biographical sketches of the members of the Legislature. The Evening Journal Almanac. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  5. Miller, Tom (15 July 2016). "The Thomas Newbold Mansion -- No. 15 East 79th Street". Daytonian in Manhattan. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  6. Hutchins, Stephen C.; Werner, Edgar Albert (1884). Civil List and Constitutional History of the Colony and State of New York. Weed, Parsons. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  7. "TO REPRESENT THE DEMOCRACY. DELEGATES ELECTED IN JEFFERSON, DUTCHESS, AND NEW-YORK" (PDF). The New York Times. September 16, 1885. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  8. 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.
  9. Patterson, Jerry E. (2000). The First Four Hundred: Mrs. Astor's New York in the Gilded Age. Random House. p. 218. ISBN 9780847822089. Retrieved 2 March 2018.
  10. 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.
  11. Birmingham, Stephen (2015). Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address. Open Road Media. p. 18. ISBN 9781504026314. Retrieved 2 March 2018.
  12. "Bellefield (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. National Park Service. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  13. O’Connor, Rosemary (2012). "Bellefield Garden's 100th Anniversary: Beatrix Farrand Garden at Bellefield at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Library, Hyde Park, NY A secret garden: Bellefield Garden celebrates 100 years". Hudson Valley Magazine. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  14. "Bellefield". National Park Service. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  15. "NEWBOLD" (PDF). The New York Times. December 30, 1922. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  16. Genealogy of Some of the Descendants of John Coolidge of Watertown, Mass., 1630,: Through the Branch Represented by Joseph Coolidge, First, of Boston. Priv. print. 1900. p. 31. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  17. "THOMAS J. COOLIDGE DEAD | Minister to France in 1892-3 Dies in His Boston Home at 89". The New York Times. 18 November 1920. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  18. America's Textile Reporter For the Combined Textile Industries. America's Textile Reporter. 1920. p. 4067. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  19. Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson (1923). "The autobiography of T. Jefferson Coolidge, 1831-1920". Houghton Mifflin company. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  20. "MARRIED" (PDF). The New York Times. June 4, 1916. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  21. Freedman, Estelle B. (1996). Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-26149-2.
  22. "THOMAS NEWBOLD, BOSTON EXECUTIVE; Electrical Engineering Firm President Succumbs in an Adirondack Camp BEGAN HIS CAREER IN BANK Descendant of Declaration of Independence Author--Was Friend of Roosevelt" (PDF). The New York Times. July 6, 1939. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  23. Times, Special To The New York (23 January 1914). "THOMAS J. NEWBOLD WEDS.; New Yorker Married to Miss Katherine Hubbard in Boston". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  24. "Jefferson's Harvard Profile" (PDF). The New York Times. July 24, 1960. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  25. "Mrs. W. Redmond Cross, Led Horticultural Society" (PDF). The New York Times. May 12, 1972. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  26. Collected Papers to Commemorate Fifty Years of the Monticello Association of the Descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville, VA: Monticello Association. 1965. p. 280. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  27. "Miss Emily Redmond Cross Is Married To John K. Vaughan-Morgan of London" (PDF). The New York Times. March 14, 1940. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
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