Nicholas Frederic Brady

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Frederic_Brady

Nicholas Frederic Brady (October 27, 1878 – March 27, 1930) was a New York City businessman and philanthropist who was the first American to receive the Roman Catholic Church honor, the Ordine Supremo del Christo. He was the holder of several papal honors including being a papal duke.

Born in Albany, New York, the son of industrialist Anthony N. Brady, he graduated from Yale University in 1899. He was raised an Episcopalian but converted to Catholicism.

Nicholas Brady and his brother James Cox Brady oversaw a vast business empire built by their father. James Brady died in 1927 and Nicholas continued running the businesses. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors of New York Edison Co. and a director of Anaconda Copper Mining Co., Westinghouse Electric, National City Bank, Union Carbide, plus numerous other companies in the United States and Japan whose activities were primarily in utilities. The Brady brothers provided substantial funds to enable Walter Chrysler to take over the ailing Maxwell Motor Company and to acquire Chrysler Corporation. Nicholas Brady would be a lifelong member of Chrysler's Board of Directors.

Nicholas Frederic Brady married Genevieve Garvan, sister of Francis Patrick Garvan. The couple had no children. A devout Roman Catholic, she was a Dame of the Holy Sepulchre, holder of the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, founder of the Carroll Club ("for Catholic business girls"), 1933 recipient of the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal as the most notable lay Catholic in America, Board Chairman of the Girls Scouts of America and a Vice-President of the Welfare Council of New York. Nicholas Brady was a lay adviser to the Roman Catholic Church and was the second American to be named Papal Chamberlain. In 1926 he was made a Papal Duke. His wife was created a papal duchess in her own right.

The papal duke and duchess lived at 910 Fifth Avenue in New York City but also built a large Tudor Elizabethan mansion, Inisfada, on an estate on the North Shore of Long Island, New York that was completed by 1920 and known as "Inisfada" (Gaelic for "Long Island"). Following Nicholas Brady's death in 1930, his widow gifted the Estate to the Society of Jesus. The Inisfada mansion is now used as The St. Ignatius Jesuit Retreat House.

Nicholas Frederic Brady is buried in a crypt beneath an altar in the main chapel at the Jesuit Novitiate at Wernersville, Pennsylvania, an institution to which he had gifted more than 2 million dollars. Genevieve Brady remarried to the Irish Free State Minister to the Vatican, William J. Babington Macaulay. The papal duchess died in 1938 and was buried beside Nicholas.

Utilities and tobacco mogul Nicholas F. Brady (1878-1930) http://bigoldhouses.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-irish-channel.html