Edmund L. Baylies

Edmund Lincoln Baylies, Jr. (December 2, 1857 – April 29, 1932) was a New York City lawyer, philanthropist, and member of New York Society during the Gilded Age.

Early life Baylies was born in New York on December 2, 1857. He was the eldest child of Edmund Lincoln Baylies (1829–1869), a merchant and philanthropist, and Nathalie Elizabeth Ray (1837–1912). He was the brother of Cornelia Prime Ray, who married Judge Francis Cabot Lowell; Walter Cabot Baylies, a president of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company who married Charlotte Upham; in 1888, and Ruth Baylies.

Career After graduating from law school, he spent a year traveling around the globe, and then joined Scudder & Carter, a firm founded by Henry Joel Scudder and James C. Carter. became partner at the firm, then known as Carter & Ledyard, after the admission of Lewis Cass Ledyard. He retired from the firm in 1926, which was then known as Carter Ledyard & Milburn, following the addition of John G. Milburn in 1904.

In 1896, he spoke before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce in support of the bill to establish a cable between the United States and the Hawaiian Islands.

He was a president of the Vanderbilt Hotel Corporation, a director of the Metropolitan Opera Company, All America Cables, Inc., the Eastern Steel Company, a trustee of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, and vice-president and trustee of the Green-Wood Cemetery. He served as the Institute's counsel from 1892 to 1915 and was chairman of the executive committee from 1905 until he became president in 1913.

Baylies was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the University Club, the Century Association, the Harvard Club, the Riding Club and the New York Yacht Club. at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan. She was the daughter of Alexander Van Rensselaer (1814–1878) and his second wife, Louisa (née Barnewall) Van Rensselaer. Her paternal grandparents were Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the Patroon of Rensselaerwyck, and Cornelia Bell Paterson, the daughter of William Paterson, the 2nd Governor of New Jersey. In 1917, after his death, his wife received the Legion of Honour in recognition of her work for France.

In 1919, he suffered from double pneumonia and traveled to the Virginia Hot Springs for recovery.

Baylies died at his home on 10 East 62nd Street in Manhattan on April 29, 1932. The pallbearers included Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler, Gen. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Stephen Baker, Walter W. Parsons, Henry Parrish, Allison V. Armour, Charles D. Wetmore, Henry B. Anderson, Frank Gray Griswold, and Frank L. Polk. The ushers were Herbert Robbins, Percy Pyne, Henry Hill Anderson, Whitney Warren, Le Roy King, Henry Bull, and George Pendelton. His widow died on December 1, 1945, at Hamstead Marshall in Newbury, England, where she was living with the Countess of Craven, formerly Cornelia Martin who was the widow of William Craven, 4th Earl of Craven and the daughter of Bradley Martin.