Kenneth N. Gilpin
Kenneth Newcomer Gilpin was a military aviator in both World War I and World War II, who served three-terms in the Virginia House of Delegates and bred thoroughbred horses.
Early life
Gilpin was born in Baltimore to Hattie Newcomer, an heiress, and Henry Brooke Gilpin, a local merchant. His father's family could trace their ancestry to the American Revolutionary War and a farm near Bedford, Pennsylvania, as well as the distinguished Brooke family of Maryland. By 1907 his mother desired a country estate, and the family moved to Scaleby, in Clarke County, Virginia within four years. The manor was designed by Baltimore architect Howard Sill and named for the ancestral Gilpin family estate in Britain.Gilpin attended the Gilman's School, then St. James School before attending the University of Virginia.
Military career
In 1916, Gilpin privately trained in Plattsburg, New York at a camp for citizen soldiers before joining the Naval Flying Corps. Gilpin fought in World War I as a naval aviator. When World War II broke out, Gilpin joined the military again, as a major in the Air Corps.Business career
Upon moving to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Gilpin bred horses, and was also active in veterans' organization, the Episcopal Church, Blue Ridge Hunt Club, Blue Ridge County Club, Commonwealth Club and Maryland Club.Voters from Clarke and adjacent Warren county elected him as their representative in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1915, and re-elected him until 1922. He later become a member of the state Highway Commission, and attended the opening of the new bridges across the Shenandoah River at Front Royal, Virginia in November 2941 in that capacity.
After retiring from active politics, Gilpin concentrated on breeding thoroughbred racehorses. He bought Fasig-Tipton, then a venerable auction company which had run the Saratoga yearling sales since World War I ; on his death in 1958, his son would succeed him, but was less successful and he ultimately left the auction business, instead founding the Stallion Service Bureau in 1960 to act as agent for others, matching thoroughbred dams and sires. Gilpin's most famous stud horse was Teddy, which he imported from France in 1931 and which sired more than 65 stakes winners. Although the Scaleby estate was once 200 acres, by 1941, when Gilpin helped found the Virginia Thoroughbred Association and became its first president, he listed his address as the approximately 50 acre Kentmere estate.
Personal life
In 1913, Gilpin met Isabella McGhee Tyson, the daughter of future Brigadier General and U.S. Senator Lawrence Tyson, at a party at the University of Virginia. The couple married four years later. Tyson's brother McGhee Tyson was a friend of Gilpin's, and the two both fought in World War I. McGhee Tyson died after crashing into the North Sea a month before the armistice.The couple had three children: McGhee Tyson Gilpin, Kenneth N. Gilpin II, and Betty Brooke Gilpin. Both of Gilpin's sons served in World War II alongside him. Gilpin's granddaughter through his son McGhee is Drew Gilpin Faust, a former president of Harvard University. His son Kenneth later married Lucy Trumbull Mitchell, the daughter of Billy Mitchell and step-daughter of Capt. Thomas Bolling Byrd, the brother of Harry Flood Byrd Sr.