Ada Bampton Tremaine

Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine (21 June 1849 – 6 August 1928) was an American philanthropist best known for the bequest that established the Bampton Lectures in America as well as an endowed chair (the Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine Professor of Religion) within the Department of Religion at Columbia University. That chair is currently held by Courtney Bender. Her predecessor, Robert Somerville, upon his retirement on 1 July 2020 was given the honorary title of Tremaine Professor Emeritus of Religion.

Biography Ada Byron Bampton was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on either 21 or 24 June 1849 to Elizabeth Shepherd Bampton, who spent the last few months of her pregnancy and first few months as a new mother residing with a friend, Hannah North. originally from Little Sutton, Warwickshire, had left for the California Gold Rush on 25 January 1849 on one of the first schooners to depart New York City for San Francisco, the Roe, He arrived in San Francisco on 28 June 1849, only a few days after Ada was born. Richard remained in California until his death on 23 June 1889 in what then was known as Washington in Yolo County, California. Ada never met her father, and it is unclear whether he ever knew of her existence. Instead, Ada grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn, living with her mother and her cousin Frederick Bampton, with whom she was particularly close, calling him her uncle even to her husband.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s Ada studied engraving at Cooper Union under the direction of J. P. Davis. After the death of her mother on 4 May 1881, Ada went to live with Frederick and his new wife, Martha. the son of a Connecticut hotelier, a physician practicing in Providence, Rhode Island. Their only child, Frederick Bampton Tremaine, was born in Providence on 6 February 1890; he died eleven months later, on 12 January 1891, of unspecified causes. In the early 1900s William and Ada Tremaine moved from Providence to Rockport, Maine, where they bought a farm in Rockland called Alderbrook;

Ada Bampton Tremaine died in Rockland on 6 August 1928, at the age of 79. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Court Challenge to Frederick Bampton's Will First page of the last will and testament of Frederick W. BamptonMost of what is known about Ada Bampton Tremaine's life comes from the records of a court case that arose from a dispute over the terms of her cousin Frederick Bampton's will, in which upon his death on 10 October 1900 Frederick, who had begun suffering from bouts of dementia, had been living with Ada and William Tremaine for over a year. His marriage of nearly 20 years to Martha Scott North had long been an unhappy one. He also did not leave any bequest to any other relatives other than Ada, "not ... because of any prejudice or want of consideration for them ... but because of the claim upon my affections of Ada B. Tremaine, my cousin's child,efn It is unclear exactly how Richard Lane Bampton and Frederick W. Bampton are related, but there is no reason to doubt Frederick's assertion that they were cousins, as was backed up by his friends' depositions, According to the depositions of Eliza Bradbrook and her daughter Georgiana given in support of Ada's claim to Frederick's estate, Frederick, Richard, and Elizabeth were on very friendly terms during the 1840s when they all lived in Manhattan and both Frederick and Richard had insisted at that time that they were cousins.

Throughout the course of the court hearing, both attorneys for the contestants and the widow Mattie Bampton herself questioned Ada's parentage, and Frederick's lucidity at the time he drew up his will. which had been appraised at $150,000 (approximately $4.9 million dollars in 2021). and endowed four permanent "free beds" at $4000 each (roughly $55,000 each in 2021 dollars) in memory of her mother, her husband, her cousin Frederick, and her son, making the final payment on those in 1924. (Free bed funds are specific donations that a hospital receives to provide free care to patients who cannot pay for all or part of their hospital stay.) She was also seemingly an annual contributor to the Camden Public Library, Rockport received $5000 to be used for the construction of a library. Camden, Maine, likewise received $5000 for the same purpose, although by the time her will was probated, the newly built Camden Public Library had already been open for two months. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals received $1000. The Camden Home for Aged Women likewise received $1000. A miniature of George III by Sarah Biffin Wright and a manuscript on her life were to be offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art "if said Museum of Art will accept the same." She provided $20,000 for the upkeep of Alderbrook Farm until the death of her husband William's cousin Grace Rockwell (The unmarried Grace Rockwell, who had long struggled with depression, committed suicide in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 10 May 1926.) Ada did not update her will, however, so her trust bequest to Grace for $10,000 was reported in the local Camden paper as if Grace were still alive. Lizzie, as she was known by family and friends, lived to be 89, dying at her home in Hartford, Connecticut on 28 May 1941. The trust funds were to be used for the establishment of a lecture series entitled the Bampton Lectures in America (Despite the occasional reporting as fact the fanciful notion that Ada Bampton Tremaine was descended from the John Bampton who founded the original Bampton Lectures at Oxford University, including that claim being made in the Columbia University Libraries' finding aid record for the Lectures, there is no evidence that these two Bampton families were related.) Ada herself makes no such claim, merely observing that she wishes "that at least once in four years the subject of the [Bampton Lectures in America] course shall be of a theologic nature, similar to the 'Bampton Lectures' in the University of Oxford, England, founded by John Bampton, Canon of Salisbury."

Ada Bampton Tremaine's estate was one of the largest probated in Knox County up to that time, being assessed at $725,000 (almost $11 million in 2021), of which $610,000 (approximately $9.5 million in 2021 dollars) was earmarked for the Bampton Lectures at Columbia University. Columbia, however, needed to wait for more than a decade to receive these funds, which could not be paid out until the final trust fund was fulfilled. Six years later Toynbee gave the first set of Bampton Lectures, three talks grouped under the theme of "The Prospect of the Western Civilization," presented at Columbia's McMillin Theater on 14 April 1948 ("The Problem of War"), 19 April 1948 ("The Problem of Class"), and 21 April 1948 ("The Conflict Between Heart and Head").