Harry Payne Bingham

Henry Payne Bingham (December 9, 1887 – March 25, 1955) was an American financier, sportsman, art patron and philanthropist. He funded a series of expeditions to study marine life.

Early life He was born in 1887 to Charles William Bingham (1846–1929), a wealthy Cleveland industrialist, and Mary (née Payne) Bingham (1854–1898). His siblings included Oliver Perry Bingham; William H. Bingham; Elizabeth Beardsley Bingham, who married Dudley Stuart Blossom; and Frances Payne Bingham, a U.S. Representative from 1940 to 1969 who married fellow Representative Chester Bolton.

His paternal grandparents were William Bingham and Elizabeth (née Beardsley) Bingham. His maternal grandparents were Henry B. Payne, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and Mary (née Perry) Payne. His mother's siblings included Nathan P. Payne, the mayor of Cleveland; Flora Payne, who married Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney; Howard Payne, the namesake of Howard Payne University; and Oliver H. Payne, a Standard Oil executive who died in 1917 without children, leaving several million dollars and his Esopus estate in the Hudson River Valley known as "Omega" to Bingham, his nephew.

Bingham prepared at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale University in 1910 where he was a classmate and roommate of Robert A. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft who was later a U.S. Senator. The Taft School was run by Horace Dutton Taft, brother of the President and uncle of his roommate. Later, he served as vice-president and donated to the Museum, including Peter Paul Rubens's Venus and Adonis, which he gave in 1928.

Personal life

Bingham, who was married three times, lived variously in New York at 690 Park Avenue as well as 834 Fifth Avenue at the time of his death. who married Lilla Fisk in 1935. They divorced in 1955 and he married Marleigh Kramer Gerry, the former wife of Robert Livingston Gerry Jr. Barbara Bingham (1914–2008), who married Rear Admiral Edward P. Moore in 1935. Emery Bingham (1920–1920), who died in infancy.

On October 8, 1927, Bingham was married to Grace Lucille (née Momand) Breese (1894–1946) at the American Church in Paris. She was previously married to James Lawrence Breese, whom she divorced in July 1927.

His third marriage was in 1937 to Melissa Williams Yuille (1898–1986), the daughter of Thomas Burks Yuille, at the home of her mother, 1040 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. One of Melissa's sisters, Susan Burks Yuille, was married to Carroll Carstairs, and another, Nancy Yuille, was married to Richard Wyndham-Quin, 6th Earl of Dunraven. in 1964.

He was a member of the New York Yacht Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club, the Tuxedo Park Club, the Greek Club, the Hanger Club, the Knickerbocker Club, the Links Club, the Piping Rock Club, the Meadow Brook Club, the River Club, National Golf Links Club and the Metropolitan Club of Washington.

Bingham died on March 25, 1955, in Palm Beach, Florida.