Alfred Wagstaff Jr.

Alfred Wagstaff Jr. (March 21, 1844 – October 2, 1921) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He was president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals from 1906 until his death in 1921. He was the son of Sarah Platt (née DuBois) Wagstaff who "was the largest landowner on Long Island until the Vanderbilts." His maternal grandparents were Cornelius DuBois and Sarah Platt (née Ogden) DuBois. Among his extended DuBois family were cousins, Eugene Floyd DuBois and Dr. Henry Augustus DuBois (grandson of Peter Augustus Jay), and uncle Cornelius DuBois, who married Mary Ann Delafield DuBois (a niece of Richard Delafield and cousin of Dr. Francis Delafield).

Career In 1863, then only 19 years old, he was commissioned as a colonel of the 16th Reg. of the New York National Guard. Wagstaff served during the New York Draft Riots in Brooklyn. In 1864, his regiment was transferred to the Union Army and stationed at Staten Island. In November 1864, he was commissioned a first lieutenant of the 91st New York Veteran Volunteers, and was detailed to the staff of Gen. William Walton Morris.

Legal and political career After graduating LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1866, Wagstaff was admitted to the bar, practiced in New York City, and resided in West Islip. He joined the New York City Bar Association.

Afterwards Wagstaff became a Democratic and in 1874, was again elected a member of the State Assembly, however, this time he represented the 7th district, New York Co., serving in the 97th New York State Legislature. In 1920, he began his two term service as the 48th President of the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, a charitable organization in New York City of men who are descended from early inhabitants of the State of New York. Wagstaff also served as Fourth Vice-president in 1914, Third Vice-president in 1915, Second Vice-president from 1916 to 1917, First Vice-president from 1918 to 1919.

Personal life On March 30, 1880, he married Mary Anderson Barnard (1860–1938). Mary was the daughter of Fannie (née Anderson) Barnard and George Gardner Barnard, the former Recorder of New York City. Together, they were the parents of five children, including: who married Blanche LeRoy Shoemaker (1886–1967), sister of Henry W. Shoemaker, in 1907. They divorced and she remarried to Donald Carr. David Wagstaff (1882–1951), a Harvard graduate who was a member of Dominick & Dominick and who married Isabelle Tilford (1887–1956), daughter of Henry Morgan Tilford. Samuel Jones Wagstaff (1885–1975), who married Pauline Leroy French (1886–1964), daughter of Amos Tuck French, in 1908. They divorced in 1920, and in December 1920, he married Polish émigré Olga May (née Piorkowska) Thomas and in March 1921, she married Donald Oliver MacRae. They also divorced, and in 1933 he married Cornelia Scranton (1896–1976), a daughter of Walter Scranton (president of the Lackawanna Steel Company) and niece of William Walker Scranton. George Barnard Wagstaff (b. 1886), who married Mary Cutting Cumnock, sister of Arthur Cumnock in 1914. They divorced and he remarried to Dorothy Frothingham, a daughter of Charles F. Frothingham. They also divorced and he remarried to Lilian Hyde Feitner (widow of Quentin Field Feitner) in 1940. Margaret Barnard Wagstaff, who married Harold Edgar Logan. She later married Arthur Perkins.

Wagstaff died on October 2, 1921, at his home, "Tahlulah", in Babylon, New York, at age 77 from "a combination of ailments due to his age".

Descendants Through his son Samuel, he was the grandfather of Samuel Jones Wagstaff Jr., a prominent art curator and collector who was in a fifteen-year relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.