Archibald D. Russell

Archibald Douglas Russell (May 28, 1853 – November 27, 1919) His father was also a founder of the American Geographical Society and the Ulster County Savings Institution, near where Russell had his country seat in Ulster County. Through his maternal grandfather, he was a great-grandson of Robert Watts (son of John Watts and brother of U.S. Representative John Watts) and Lady Mary Alexander (daughter of William Alexander, Lord Stirling).

Personal life In 1884, Russell was married to Albertina Taylor Pyne (1859–1918), a daughter of Albertina (née Taylor) Pyne and the English-born Percy Rivington Pyne, the president of National City Bank. Her two brothers were Percy Rivington Pyne II and Moses Taylor Pyne and her grandfather was Moses Taylor, an early president of National City Bank. Together, they were the parents of five children, four of whom survived to adulthood: in Rome in February 1895. Ethelberta Pyne Russell (1887–1952), who married physical chemist Marion Eppley in 1909. Archibald Douglas Russell Jr. (1890–1968), who married Mariette Andrews Doolittle, daughter of Julius T. A. Doolittle of Utica, New York, and niece of Judge Alfred Conkling Coxe Sr. Helen Rutherfurd Russell (b. 1897), who married R. Lawrence Benson in 1919. After his death, she married Joseph S. Clements in 1938. Constance Rivington Russell (1899–1983), who married John Gilbert Winant, later the Governor of New Hampshire and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in 1919. After his death, she married her late sisters widower, Marion, in 1953. After Eppley's death in 1960, she married Walter K. Earle, a lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, in 1965.

He was a member of the New York Yacht Club, the Riding Club, the Union Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Century Association and the Princeton Club of New York. His wife was widely known for her contributions that allowed for the construction of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (today known as the Washington National Cathedral) in Washington, D.C. Russell died at his home in New York on November 27, 1919. He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. His entire estate, estimated at $50,000,000, was left to his children.

Residences

In New York, the Russells lived at 34 East 36th Street. In 1903, Russell hired his brother William Hamilton Russell, a partner in the architecture firm of Clinton and Russell, to build Edgerstoune, (Edgerstoune was named after Edgerston, the 1808 estate of his great-grandfather, U.S.) Senator John Rutherfurd, on the banks of the Passaic River (near what is today Rutherford, New Jersey), which was itself named after Edgerston, the estate of their ancestors, Clan Rutherfurd, located just north of the Anglo-Scottish border, and eight miles south of Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. Edgerstoune, which cost between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 to construct, was located across the street from Drumthwacket the estate of his brother-in-law, Moses Taylor Pyne (and currently the official residence of the governor of New Jersey), and directly adjoining the estates of Junius Spencer Morgan, William T. White, and C. B. Lambert. After his death, the 274-acre Edgerstoune estate was sold by his son-in-law, Governor John Gilbert Winant, to Albert Robertshaw who planned a large real estate development with a country club. Less than a month later, it was sold to Professor John G. Hun, headmaster of the Hun School of Princeton for $350,000.

Descendants Through his son Archibald, he was a grandfather of A. Douglas Russell III, Louise Russell (wife of John Evelyn duPont Irving), Isabel Russell (wife of Robert S. Potter) and a great-grandfather of Linda Potter (born January 13, 1956) who married Timothy Shriver, a member of the Kennedy Family through his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a younger sister of President John F. Kennedy. John Gilbert Winant Jr. (1922–1993) (who served as a bomber pilot in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Colditz, before his removal in April 1945 as one of the Prominente to be used as a bargaining chip by Himmler and the SS as the end of the war approached; he was eventually released); and Rivington Russell Winant (1925–2011) (who also served in World War II and later became treasurer at the United Nations).