Walter Lispenard Suydam

Walter Lispenard Suydam (May 20, 1854 – August 10, 1930)

Early life Suydam was born on May 20, 1854, in New York City. He was the son of Anna White (née Schermerhorn) Suydam (1818–1886), and Charles Suydam (1818–1882).

His paternal grandparents were Ferdinand Suydam and Eliza (née Bartow) Suydam. His maternal grandfather was Abraham Schermerhorn. His relatives included: who married General James I. Jones; who married John Treat Irving Jr., a nephew of Washington Irving; the middle son of William Backhouse Astor Sr. He was a cousin of Eleanor Colford Jones, who was married to Augustus Newbold Morris; Benjamin Welles, Emily Astor, who married sportsman/politician James John Van Alen; Helen Schermerhorn Astor, who married diplomat James Roosevelt (and elder half-brother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt); Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, who married Marshall Orme Wilson (brother of banker Richard Thornton Wilson, Jr. and socialite Grace Wilson Vanderbilt); and John Jacob Astor IV, who married Ava Lowle Willing and, later, married socialite Madeleine Talmage Force, before perishing aboard the Titanic in 1912.

Career He started his business career at an early age and was prominent in financial circles on Wall Street as a produce exchange broker. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom (Walter's aunt).

Suydam was chairman of the Sayville Tournament Committee and was a member of the Metropolitan Club, the Union Club of the City of New York, the Navy Club, the Holland Club and the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York (of which he served as president in 1913), the Military Society of the War of 1812, the Society of Colonial Wars (of which he was an officer for many years), and the Sons of the American Revolution. Her grandfather, John Suydam, "one of the old Knickerbocker merchants" who was the head of Suydam & Wycoff, and her uncles included Henry P. M. Suydam and D. Lydig Suydam. and a home in New York City at 5 West 76th Street. Together, they were the parents of: who married Louise Lawrence White (1886–1912), a great-granddaughter of Prosper Wetmore in 1903. They divorced in 1912 after she ran away with a plumber's assistant, whom she later married and shortly thereafter, committed suicide with. After her death, he married Elizabeth Maxwell Tybout Wood (1892–1951) in 1913.

Suydam died after a short illness at his estate in Blue Point, Long Island on August 10, 1930. His funeral and burial was held at St. Ann's Church in Sayville.