Thomas Newbold

Thomas Newbold (May 19, 1849 – November 11, 1929)

His paternal grandparents were Philadelphia born Thomas Newbold and Catherine (née LeRoy) Newbold, who died in Paris, France, in 1835. studying in the office of Sanford, Robinson & Woodruff, eventually graduating from Columbia Law School in 1874. to serve as a Democratic State Senator in the 107th and 108th New York State Legislatures, representing the 15th District, which included Columbia, Dutchess and Putnam counties. In 1885, he was selected by the Democrats of the 2nd District, Dutchess County, to represent them at the State Convention. While serving in the State Senate, he became close with then Governor of New York, Grover Cleveland, later the president of the United States. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. Newbold was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club and the Church. In 1912, the Newbolds hired Beatrix Farrand (the daughter of his cousin Frederic Rhinelander Jones and his wife, Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones) to design a walled residential garden at Bellefield. It is one of the earliest extant examples of Farrand's residential designs, and is one of the only known pairings of works by Farrand and the architects McKim, Mead & White, who remodeled the Newbolds' eighteenth-century house from 1909 to 1911 in the Colonial Revival style.

Personal life

On June 2, 1880, Newbold was married to Sarah Lawrence Coolidge (1858–1922), a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson. and Mehitable Sullivan "Hetty" (née Appleton) Coolidge. Together, they were the parents of:

Mary Edith Newbold (1883–1969), who married William Gerald Dare Morgan (1879–1948), a descendant of the Livingston and Hoyt families (through Maturin Livingston), in 1916. Gerald, as he was known, was the brother of Geraldine Morgan Thompson. Thomas Jefferson Newbold (1886–1939), who married Katherine Hubbard in 1914. Julia Appleton Newbold (1891–1972), who married William Redmond Cross (1874–1940), a governor of the Aero Club of America from 1911 to 1921 and president of the New York Zoological Society, in 1913.

In 1916, he hired McKim, Mead & White to build a new residence for his family at 15 East 79th Street (which today is the Rudolf Steiner School). The architects tore down two identical brownstones and built an Italian Renaissance style palazzo with an arched double-door entrance. He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. After his death, his estate was divided equally among his three children with his eldest daughter Mary inheriting their New York City residence and Bellefield in Hyde Park. who married John Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan, a Member of Parliament for Reigate who was the son of the Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan and the Lady Vaughan-Morgan of London,