William Bayard Cutting

William Bayard Cutting (January 12, 1850 – March 1, 1912), a member of New York's merchant aristocracy, was an attorney, financier, real estate developer, sugar beet refiner and philanthropist. Cutting and his brother Fulton started the sugar beet industry in the United States in 1888. He was a builder of railroads, operated the ferries of New York City, and developed part of the south Brooklyn waterfront, Red Hook.

Biography

He was born to Fulton Cutting (1816–1875) and Elise Justine Bayard (1823–1852) and was the brother of financier Robert Fulton Cutting (1852–1934). His grandfather, Robert Cutting, was Robert Fulton's partner in the ferry from Brooklyn to New York.

He was trained at Columbia College, as a lawyer, in which capacity he assisted his grandfather, Robert Bayard, in the management of his railroad company. In addition, W. Bayard Cutting continued to operate the ferry system of New York City and the city of Brooklyn.

He was an outdoorsman and a gardener of great ability.

His Long Island estate along the west bank of the Connetquot River, purchased from George L. Lorillard in 1884, and the country house called "Westbrook" which he built there, are now the Bayard Cutting Arboretum, in Great River, New York.

In 1895 Cutting and his brother laid out a golf course at Westbrook, known to be the first private golf course in the United States.

Cutting was a member of the famous Jekyll Island Club (aka The Millionaires Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia. He was also a founding member of the good government organization, the City Club of New York.

Cutting died of acute indigestion while on a train coming back from El Paso, Texas.

Personal life

On April 26, 1877, he married Olivia Peyton Murray (1855–1949), the daughter of Bronson Murray of Murray Hill, New York. They had four children:

• William Bayard Cutting (1878–1910) – secretary to the U.S. embassy to the Court of St. James's. He married 30 April 1901, Lady Sybil Marjorie Cuffe, daughter of Hamilton John Agmondesham Cuffe, 5th Earl of Desart and Lady Margaret Joan Lascelles. She was the mother of Iris Origo, the Marchesa Origo, the author of many books.
• Justine Bayard Cutting (Ward) (1879–1975) – married George Cabot Ward in 1901. She developed the Ward Method of music education as a way to teach sight-singing to children in Catholic schools in order to promote Gregorian chant.
• Bronson Murray Cutting, (1888–1935) – U.S. Senator from New Mexico who was killed in an airplane crash.
• Olivia M. Cutting (James) (1892–1963) – married Henry James, son of psychologist William James, in 1917.