John C. Furman

John C. Furman ( – October 13, 1898) was an American financier who was a prominent member of New York society during the Gilded Age. and Elizabeth (née Vail) Furman. His sisters were Catherine Anthony Furman, the wife of James M. Waterbury (the parents of Monte and Lawrence Waterbury and in-laws to Gouverneur Morris), and Alice Furman, the wife of Frank Lazarus (in-laws of Charles P. Howland ). After his mother died, his father remarried Miss Virginia Dimond Holmes, and through this marriage, became the elder half-brother to Silas Holmes Furman (who married Marcia Shackford), Maria Holmes Furman, the wife of W. Bond Emerson,

Career Upon the creation of the Cordage Trust in 1887 (which was formed from the Waterbury families interest in the Waterbury Rope Company ), by his brother-in-law James who was head of the Trust, Furman was made an officer and obtained a small fortune. In 1893, however, the Trust failed, and Furman lost "not only his fortune, but all his available means and was obliged to sacrifice all his property," from which he never recovered. According to his obituary in The New York Times: Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. Before his bankruptcy, he was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Country Club, the New York Yacht Club and the Metropolitan Club in Washington, D.C.