Chauncey Devereaux Stillman (1907 - 1989)

Born 14 Dec 1907 in New York City, New York, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Theodora Moran (Jay) Rahv — married 21 Jan 1939 in Westbury, Nassau, New York, United States

Died 24 Jan 1989 at age 81 in New York City, New York, United States

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Biography

Chauncey Stillman is Notable.

This is Chauncey Devereux Stillman (1907-1989), an heir to one of America's great family banking fortunes. Mr. Stillman was a Harvard man (Class of 1929), a graduate of the Columbia School of Architecture, and at various times Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, director of the National Audubon Society and New York Botanical Garden, WW II air combat intelligence officer, and pioneer in soil and water conservation on his Dutchess County estate. His philanthropic father, Charles Chauncey Stillman (1877-1926), was one of Harvard's greatest benefactors. His grandfather, James Jewett Stillman (1850-1918) was the 15th richest man in America, a distinction achieved by parlaying his father's Texas banking and railroad interests into, among other things, controlling interest in the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank). At age 26, grandfather Stillman bankrolled Porfirio Diaz in the successful overthrow of the Mexican government. For his trouble he obtained unlimited riparian rights on the Rio Grande at Brownsville, Texas, plus valuable Mexican railroad concessions. Mr. Stillman's great-grandfather, Charles, was a Texas land and banking mogul who founded the city of Brownsville. There was nothing parvenu about Chauncey Stillman.

Enterance to the Stillman estate, Wethersfield, named after the Connecticut hometown of Mr. Stillman's ancestors. Its 1200 acres and 1939 Georgian Revival mansion have barely changed since the day he died. Mr. Stillman had several passions of the expensive sort that rich men indulge in. He was, for example, a major figure in American driving circles. We're not talking cars here, but horse-drawn vehicles. Wethersfield's carriage collection - phaetons, wagonettes, breaks, gigs, and a sumptuous park drag - still sit gleaming in the stable building beyond the gate.

On January 27, 1939, Chauncey Stillman married Theodora Moran Jay, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. DeLancey Kane Jay of Westbury, Long Island. The bride was a descendant of John Jay, America's first Chief Justice, and Edwin D. Morgan, Civil War Governor of New York. According to the Times, the ceremony was held in a "tiny chapel in the home of the bride's grandmother, Mrs. Edwin D. Morgan." Coincident with his marriage the groom hired architect Bancel LaFarge, a lingering Beaux Artiste in an era of unforgiving Art Moderne, to design a Georgian style house on the highest point of farmland he had been acquiring since 1937. Beaux Arts or no, LaFarge's design - especially the interior finishes - is thoroughly modern. I have read, apropos of architecture, of the "scaled down taste" of the '20s and '30s. Wethersfield exemplifies the statement. It is a house for a man who can afford anything, but neither cares for nor wants to be bothered with the architectural elaboration of earlier generations.

. After his 1949 divorce, Mr. Stillman converted to Catholicism and soon became an ardent proponent of all things Catholic. During his lifetime he endowed the Stillman Chair for Catholic Studies at Harvard and was sufficiently active in Catholic charities to be honored as a Gentiluomo de Sua Santita by the Holy See. On a more domestic level he converted the small reception room at Wethersfield into a private chapel.

Sources

• http://bigoldhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-upper-class-between-wars.html

• http://www.stillman.org/i760.htm

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Stillman

• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135057088/chauncey-devereux-stillman