Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler
Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler, was an American heiress and socialite during the Gilded Age. She was also a member of the Astor family.
Early life and family
Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler was the eldest surviving daughter born to U.S. Representative John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Chanler of the wealthy Astor family. Through her father, she was a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam, Wait Winthrop and Joseph Dudley. Through her mother, she was a grand-niece of Julia Ward Howe, John Jacob Astor III, and William Backhouse Astor Jr.. Chanler and her siblings became orphans after the death of their mother in December 1875 and their father in October 1877, both to pneumonia. The children were raised at Rokeby, their parents' 43 room estate in Barrytown.Elizabeth, a "tough-minded woman who even in the nursery was known as 'Queen Bess' by her siblings," had nine brothers and sisters, including John Armstrong Chanler ; politicians William Astor Chanler, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, and the artist Robert Winthrop Chanler. Her sister, Margaret Livingston Chanler, served as a nurse with the American Red Cross during the Spanish–American War, Winthrop Astor Chanler, served in the Rough Riders in Cuba and was wounded at the Battle of Tayacoba.
Society life
At her father's death in 1871, his estate was valued between $1,500,000 and $2,000,000. John Winthrop Chanler's will provided $20,000 a year for each child for life, enough to live comfortably by the standards of the time.In 1892, Elizabeth, her sisters, Margaret and Alida, and her brother Winthrop and his wife Margaret Terry Chanler, were all included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred (1892)|Four Hundred]", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. Elizabeth was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club of New York.
In 1893, while she was in London for a brother's wedding, John Singer Sargent, the most famous and sought after portrait artist of the day, painted a portrait of the then twenty-six year old Elizabeth. According to Sargent, she had "the face of the Madonna and the eyes of a child." Her son donated the portrait to the Smithsonian [American Art Museum] in 1980.
Personal life
On April 23, 1899, Chanler married author John Jay Chapman, the son of Henry Grafton Chapman, a president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Eleanor Kingsland Chapman, a great-granddaughter of John Jay, the first Supreme Court Chief Justice. Chapman was previously married to Minna Timmins, who died in 1897. Elizabeth and her husband had one child together:- Chanler Armstrong Chapman, who married Olivia James, daughter of Edward Holton James and a grandniece of Henry James, William James, and Alice James. They divorced and he married Helen Riesenfeld, a writer, in 1948. After her death in 1970, he married Dr. Ida R. Holzbert Wagman in 1972.