Bertha Perry Ronalds

Bertha Constance Perry Ronalds (November 27, 1874 – February 3, 1963) was an American philanthropist and socialite during the Gilded Age. and Emma Constance (née Frink) Perry (born 1848). His first marriage was to Edith Lounsberry (granddaughter of James Ben Ali Haggin), with whom he had William Haggin Perry, after their divorce, he married for the second time to Mary Ridgeley Sands, the former wife of Lorillard S. Spencer, and following her death, he married thirdly to Brenda Williams-Taylor, the daughter of Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor and mother of debutante Brenda Frazier. Through her father, she was a descendant of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, known as the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.

Society life In 1892, Bertha and her widowed mother were included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. She was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In December 1896, social arbiter Harry Lehr wrote in his diary that he "lunched with Bertha and Larry Ronalds, who is still boasting of being natural son of Napoleon III." Her husband's parents had separated and her mother-in-law Fanny, was known for her association with Empress Eugénie, Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra. and many affairs with prominent men, including Leonard Jerome (Winston Churchill's grandfather) and the composer Arthur Sullivan. In Paris, where they lived for many years, the Ronalds were social acquaintances of Henry Adams, who in a 1908 letter to Elizabeth Cameron, referred to Bertha as "the rattling little nez-retroussé type of latent ambition and self-conscious self-distrust under self-assertion." at Ridgelawn in Bay Ridge on Long Island. Her bridesmaids were Mamie Field and Juliana Cutting and his ushers were James F. D. Lanier, Whitney Warren, H. Whitney McVickar, Eliot Gregory, J. Wadsworth Ritchie, F. L. Holbrook Betts, H. Pierrepont Perry and Herbert D. Robins. and great-grandson of tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard II.

Her husband died in February 1928, leaving an estate worth more than $1,000,000, the bulk of which she inherited. After returning from living in Paris, Ronalds owned a ranch in Oregon where she raised Tennessee walking horses, Arabians and Shetland ponies and then lived in San Mateo, California for twenty-six years at 40 Crystal Springs Road. She died there at her home on February 3, 1963. Ronalds was interred at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California after a funeral that was officiated by the Rev. Leslie Wilder of the Episcopal Church of St. Matthew.