Edward Hamlin Everett

Edward Hamlin Everett (May 18, 1851 – April 26, 1929) was a noted American businessman and philanthropist, and a founder of the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont.

Early life Everett was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 18, 1851. He was a son of Dr. Henry Everett (1819–1854), a urologist who died when he was only three years old, and Mary (née Hamlin) (1830–1890). After his mother remarried to Henry W. Putnam, a businessman, inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist, she moved to New York City and young Everett stayed in Cleveland with his uncle, Sylvester T. Everett. Sylvester was a financier who began his career at Cleveland's oldest banking house, Brockway, Wason, Everett & Co., which had been co-founded by Edward's father, Dr. Henry Everett. His uncle married a granddaughter of Jeptha Wade as his second wife.

Amy King Everett (1887–1964), who married Dr. Lucius Arthur Wing, a son of Charles Mayhew Wing. Mary Putnam Everett (1892–1961), who married Luigi Guilio Turri and lived in Italy. Anne Holton Everett (1897–1948), who married James Kirtland Selden of Methuen Mills.

In 1918, Everett was introduced to Grace Belle Burnap (1879–1969) at a dinner given by society hostess Mary Foote Henderson, widow of U.S. Senator John B. Henderson. Burnap was the sister of George Burnap, a landscape architect best known for Meridian Hill Park in Washington and St. Joseph Parkway in Missouri. After spending some time in Europe, Everett married Grace on March 27, 1920, at St. James Church in Chicago. A singer, Grace had attended the Boston Conservatory of Music and studied voice in Munich and Paris. Together, they were the parents of two more daughters: Sarah Everett (1922–2006), who married Horace D. McCowan Jr., a lawyer and chairman of the E. H. Everett Company, an oil and gas production company in Newark, Ohio in 1950.

In 1922, Everett was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Everett died at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on April 26, 1929, of complications from prostate cancer surgery. He was buried in the Everett mausoleum in Park Lawn Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont (purportedly modeled after the Theseion at the Acropolis of Athens). Prior to the 1929 stock market crash, Everett's wealth was estimated to be between $40–50 million. However, it was greatly reduced due to the depression and poor business decisions in his later years. In April 1936, Grace sold their Washington residence, and all its furnishings and interior decorations, to the Turkish government for $402,000.

Real estate In 1912, Everett transferred title of his Newark home on Buena Vista Street to the help establish the town's first hospital, and later deeded 20 acres on Everett Avenue to the Newark Board of Education for Everett Park. From 1910 to 1915, Everett built a large mansion in Washington, D.C., known as the Edward Hamlin Everett House, from 1911 to 1914, he built a large summer residence in Bennington, known as The Orchards, on 500 acres of farm land (which later became the Southern Vermont College). He also vacationed at the Château de l'Aile in Vevey, Switzerland.

In June 1911, Everett purchased the venerable Richmond Hotel at 17th and H Streets, and several adjoining properties for $275,000. The Richmond, which was diagonally across from the Metropolitan Club had been built in 1883. Beginning in the summer of 1912, he extensively renovated and refurnished the hotel to make it more upscale and appealing to an affluent clientele.