Grace Graham Vanderbilt

Grace Wilson Vanderbilt (1870-1953)

Grace Wilson Vanderbilt was the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt III. She was the queen of America's high society whose first major social success came in 1902, when Prince Henry of the House of Hohenzollern, the German Kaiser's brother, chose her to be his sole hostess on his visit to America.

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Grace Wilson-Vanderbilt (1870-1953) wearing her mother-in-laws Cartier Jewels

Above in the picture, Grace Wilson-Vanderbilt (1870-1953) she was the daughter-in-law of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Mrs. Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt, the "Queen of New York society".

The magnificent diamond-necklace with hanging pear-shaped and round diamonds made by Cartier for her mother-in-law in 1908.

The breathtaking "stomacher" in the new design of the periode, hanging like a sash between 2 large diamond bow-brooches, cascades of diamond-fringes and large tassels of diamond, matching to the couture gowns of Paul Poiret, Paris, also made by Cartier for Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1910.

The enormous brooch at her waist is not known now....

but the value of the jewellery casket of her mother-in-law was $ 1 000 000,-- , after those collections of Mrs Rockefeller, Astor and other Vanderbilt ladys.

By the 1850s, the Vanderbilts were wealthier than any “Old Society” their invitations are like fairy-tales, elegant and stylish at their house.

As the wife of one of America's wealthiest "robber barons", Mrs. Vanderbilt amassed a jewelry collection of great importance. The Vanderbilts were among the most influential of the new American aristocracy and Cartier furnished the family dynasty with European crown jewels as well as spectacular custom pieces.

In the pic above, Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt III shown in the library of 640 fifth Avenue, where she entertained lavishly for decades as excentric mentor, she attent at the opening night of 1939 Metropolitan season in New York, wearing some impressive pieces of her mothers-in-law jewellery, 5 years after their death, so it will be, she got a lot of this amazing items.

Cornelius, Jr. married Miss Grace G. Wilson against Cornelius Sr.'s wishes in 1896. She met and became secretly engaged to William Henry "Bill" Vanderbilt while he was a student at Yale, rooming with his younger brother, Cornelius III. Unfortunately in 1892, Bill died of typhoid fever. But the events that would shatter the Vanderbilts began on the night of Gertrude Vanderbilt's coming out party in 1895. There 22-year-old Cornelius met Grace Wilson, and was hypnotized by her beauty. She was his first love.

The Vanderbilts felt Grace was too old for their son (by only two years) too worldly, too talked about and she had been engaged to Jack Astor and had broken it. The family did everything they could to break them up. He had numerous heated quarrels with his father about Grace, and he left his parents' home. His father had a stoke which eventually caused his death.

Cornelius, Sr. cut off the elder brother from the bulk of the inheritance.

When Cornelius, Sr. died suddenly at age fifty-six of a cerebral hemorrhage, he still had not forgiven his elder son.

The bulk of the $72 million estate passed to Alfred Gwynne, who hurried home from a world tour. Alfred's inheritance symbolically included the gold Congressional Medal awarded to Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the Vanderbilt family fortune, for his donation of the S. S. Vanderbilt to Union forces during the Civil War. Most of the other siblings received $7 million. Cornelius, Jr. only received $1 million. The squabble over the inheritance created an irreparable rift between the once affectionate brothers.

In order to remedy the injustice done to Cornelius, Jr., Alfred offered his brother $6 million to make Cornelius' share equal to that of the other siblings. Far from reconciling the two brothers, only more arguments resulted. Up to the time of Alfred's death, the two were still unreconciled.

Two tales that may best illustrate what it means to be a Vanderbilt..........

Alice, Cornelius II's wife, was having luncheon one day at the old Ambassador Hotel with her son, Reggie, and his new second wife, Gloria Morgan, when she inquired of the not so freshly minted bridegroom: "Has Gloria received her pearls yet?" He would love to give pearls to Gloria, Reggie answered, but he could not afford the kind he thought worthy of his bride.

"Please bring me a pair of scissors," Alice commanded the maitre d', and when they were produced, she cut off about a third of her own pearls, or roughly $70,000 worth, from the ropes of them that hung around her neck.

"There you are, Gloria," said Alice fondly. "All Vanderbilt women have pearls."

Just as telling is this story about Grace Wilson, who married Cornelius III: "Signing checks one morning which totaled $80,000, Grace casually asked her secretary, Do I have this much money?'"

Grace Wilson Vanderbilts wardrobes filled with Worth and Pacquin creations, her 33 servants imported from ducal and princely households abroad, her parties attended by crown heads of Europe rose to reign for almost half a century as Queen of American Society of an golden age.

There had never been another hostess like her and probably never will be, so in a single year, she entertained 37,000 guests in her New York and Newport mansions and on her husband's 233-foot ocean-going yacht, the North Star.

Her sway over society began in the gas-lit red velvet parlors of the turn of the century, outlasting two wars, the crash, bathtub gin, flappers and cafe society. She ran everything and everyone in a grand manner, by means of her strength, charm and money and entertained in a way that will never return.

Her death in 1953 at age 83, signaled as perhaps nothing else could, the passing of a fabulous era .

Grace Graham Wilson was born in 1870 at 512 Fifth Avenue, as the youngest daughter of Richard T. and Melissa Johnston Wilson. Her father was a self-made broker, banker and multi-millionaire born in Gainesville, GA in 1829, who married into a very wealthy family from Loudon, TN, a southern woman named as one of the three most fashionable dowagers in America in the book, "The Ultra-Smart Peerage."

All of the Wilson children married into famous wealthy families: Orme married Carrie Astor, a $15 million fortune; Richard to Anne Mason, a prominent medical family; May to Ogden Goelet, scion of the Goelet, $15 million; Belle to the Hon. Michael Herbert, British Embassy, brother to the Earl of Pembroke, one of the oldest dynasties in England; and Grace to Cornelius "Neily" Vanderbilt III, millionaire.

Her horizons as a young woman widened immeasurably because of her sister's entrance into English society, and her life assumed a pattern that it followed for many years.

Great beauty, backed by even a little wealth opened wide every society door, and Grace was a classic beauty, sophisticated, cultured, well-traveled, educated and quite wealthy.

They were married, even though he had been told he would be disinherited. The Vanderbilts had two children. There was no contact with his family for 11 years, until after his father's death when he and his mother finally reconciled.

Grace began her simple party-giving with no aspirations beyond giving a handful of diehard Vanderbilts their come-uppance. She was so qualified with the talent, skill and savior faire she possessed, that she was a very successful hostess.

Grace Vanderbilt's social activities, in which she followed social protocol to the letter. She gave two dinner parties per week and one ball a month.

These parties included all the important and wealthy American personalities, as well as royalty, socialites, bankers and diplomats but no Vanderbilts.

source:Grace Wilson Vanderbilt Queen of the Golden Age

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GRACE GRAHAM born September 03, 1870 married CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, III. Children of Grace and Cornelius were CORNELIUS IV born 1898 and GRACE born aft. 1900 married to HENRY GASSAWAY DAVIS in 1927 at the LITTLE CHURCH AROUND THE CORNER In New York City. Henry was from West Virginia, a Princeton graduate and mining engineer.

Grace Graham Wilson, gave herself the name "Grace Graham" after being called "Baby" for three years. Grace named herself after her great grandmother, Margaret Graham who emigrated from Ireland to Virginia. Every summer until Grace was seven years she would visit with her mother in Loudon, Tennessee, to visit her Southern relatives. There she helped dam up the creek and went swimming in it, picked blackberries, and climbed about the old peg-constructed barn. After Great grandmother Margaret Graham Johnston died, Melissa Wilson never returned to Loudon, Tennessee. The relatives never saw Grace again, but they were clothed in things that were sent from New York. "We were just country tykes, wearing calico and percale. The clothes the Wilsons sent were practically new, some of them had probably been worn only once. They were lovely silks, brocades, and laces. I can still remember playing in the red clay gullies in Grace Wilson's blue satin slippers."

Reference from the book "Queen of the golden age ; the fabulous Grace Wilson Vanderbilt" by her son Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr

Heiress, Socialite, She was the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt III. Grace was the youngest child of New York banker Richard Thornton Wilson, Sr. and Melissa Clementine Johnston. Grace's sister Mary ("May") married Ogden Goelet and her sister Belle married Sir Michael Henry Herbert, younger brother of the 13th Earl of Pembroke. The sisters were known in London society as "the marrying Wilsons." One of her brothers was banker Richard Thornton Wilson, Jr.. Another brother, Marshall Orme Wilson, married Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, youngest daughter of William Backhouse Astor, Jr. and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn of the Astor family. She eloped with Cornelius "Neily" Vanderbilt III, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Alice Claypoole Gwynne of the Vanderbilt family, in 1896. This led to a violent disagreement between Neily and his father, which lasted many years. Neily and Grace remained married for the rest of their lives and had two children. In 1940, Neily sold his Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City to members of the Astor family but remained living there until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationing in Miami Beach, Florida aboard his yacht in 1942. Following Neily's death Grace Vanderbilt was forced to move out of their massive Fifth Avenue mansion, and moved into the William Starr Miller House at 1048 Fifth Avenue which still stands today as the Neue Galerie. Grace lived another eleven years, and she died on January 7, 1953. They are buried together in the Vanderbilt family mausoleum in the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp on Staten Island, New York. (bio from wiki & other sources)