Rutherfurd Stuyvesant

Rutherfurd was born on September 2, 1843. He was the oldest of seven children born to Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816–1892) and Margaret Chanler Stuyvesant (1820–1890). His younger siblings included Louisa Morris Rutherfurd (1855–1892), Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd (1853-1916), who was married to Henry White, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, Jr. (1859–1901), who was married to Anne Harriman Vanderbilt (1861–1940), and Winthrop Rutherfurd (1886-1944), who was married to Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, a mistress of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

His paternal grandparents were Robert Walter Rutherfurd (1788–1852) and Sabina Morris (1789–1857) of Morrisania. He was the great-grandson of U.S. Senator John Rutherfurd and 2x great-grandson of Lewis Morris, the Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rutherfurd was a direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Netherland before it became New York, as well as John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts. His mother's siblings included Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (1824–1904) and John Winthrop Chanler (1826–1877). Among his cousins was U.S. Representative William Astor Chanler.

Stuyvesant was an 1863 graduate of Columbia College.

Name change

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), the 2x great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant, and Helena Rutherfurd Stuyvesant.

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 Grammercy Park. The building was a five story walk up built for middle-class tenants.

Society life

Stuyvesant was a collector of arms and armor, fine china and paintings.

His mansion in New York was located at the corner of Second Avenue and 15th Street, near most of the Stuyvesant and Rutherfurd properties.

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.

He was a member of the Union Club of New York, the Century Club, the City Racquet Club, the New York Yacht Club, the Atlantic Yacht Club and the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Clubs, The Downtown Association, The Columbia College Alumni Association, New-York Historical Society, and the American Geographical Society. He was a fellow at the American Museum of Natural History and the National Academy of Design, and a patron and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1863, he was married to Mary Pierrepont (1842–1879), a daughter of Henry Evelyn Pierrepont (1808–1888) and Anna Maria Jay (1819–1902), and a granddaughter of Peter Augustus Jay. 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. She was the widow of a Dutch Count. Together, they were the parents of:

• Lewis Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1903–1944), who married Rosalie Stuyvesant Pillot in 1925, daughter of Peter Stuyvesant Pillot. The couple had one child, Peter Winthrop Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1935–1970), before they divorced in 1930. He later married Elizabeth (nee Larocque) Smith in 1934. She was the former wife of Schuyler Knowlton Smith and the daughter of Joseph Laroque.
• Alan Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1905–1954), who did not marry. He was injured in a car accident in 1934. He died aboard a ship just short of arriving at their destination to France.

Rutherfurd died suddenly while out for his customary morning walk in the Champs-Élysées in Paris on July 4, 1909. 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. She died in 1948 and was buried in the Stuyvesant family plot at Tranquility Cemetery, New Jersey.