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in: Smith (surname), Born in 1852, Died in 1933,
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Alva Erskine Smith (1853-1933)

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Biography

Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont was born 17 January 1852 in Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama, United States to Murray Forbes Smith (1815-1875) and Phoebe Ann Desha (1821-1871) and died 26 January 1933 Paris, Paris, Ile-de-France, France of unspecified causes. She married William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849-1920) 20 April 1875 in Calvary Church, Manhattan, New York, United States. She married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont (1858-1908) 11 January 1896 in New York City, New York, United States.

Alva Belmont (née Alva Erskine Smith — known as Alva Vanderbilt) from 1875 to 1896 — was a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the American women's suffrage movement. She was noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention.

In 1909, she founded the Political Equality League to get votes for suffrage-supporting New York State politicians, wrote articles for newspapers, and joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She later formed her own Political Equality League to seek broad support for suffrage in neighborhoods throughout New York City, and, as its president, led its division of New York City's 1912 Women's Votes Parade. In 1916, she was one of the founders of the National Woman's Party and organized the first picketing ever to take place before the White House, in January 1917. She was elected president of the National Woman's Party, an office she held until her death.

She was married twice, first to William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and secondly to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont; both men were millionaires and members of socially prominent families in New York City. Alva was known for her many building projects, including Petit Chateau in New York; the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island; the Belmont House, also in New York; Brookholt in Long Island; and Beacon Towers in Sands Point, New York.

On "Equal Pay Day," April 12, 2016, Belmont was honored as President Barack Obama established the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C.

Early life

Murray Forbes Smith House

Her birthplace, the Murray Forbes Smith House at 201 Government Street in Mobile, Alabama.

Alva Erskine Smith was born on January 17, 1853, at 201 Government Street in Mobile, Alabama, to Murray Forbes Smith, a commission merchant, and Phoebe Ann Desha. Murray Smith was the son of George Smith and Delia Forbes of Dumfries, Virginia. Phoebe Desha was the daughter of US Representative Robert Desha and Eleanor Shelby, both originally from Sumner County, Tennessee.[1]

Alva was one of six children. Two of her sisters, Alice and Eleanor, both died as children before she was born. Her brother, Murray Forbes Smith, Jr. died in 1857 and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile. Two other sisters, Armide Vogel Smith and Mary Virginia "Jennie" Smith, were her only siblings to survive into adulthood. Jennie first married the brother of Alva's childhood best friend, Consuelo Yznaga, Duchess of Manchester.

Following a divorce from Fernando Yznaga in 1886, Jennie remarried to William George Tiffany.[2][3] As a child, Alva summered with her parents in Newport, Rhode Island, and accompanied them on European vacations. In 1859, the Smiths left Mobile and relocated to New York City, where they briefly settled in Madison Square. When Murray went to Liverpool, England, to conduct his business, her mother, Phoebe Smith, moved to Paris where Alva attended a private boarding school in Neuilly-sur-Seine.[4] After the Civil War, the Smith family returned to New York, where her mother died in 1871.

Personal life

660 5th Avenue New York City

The Vanderbilts' Petit Chateau at 660 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

At a party for one of William Henry Vanderbilt's daughters, Smith's best friend, Consuelo Yznaga[5] introduced her to William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. On April 20, 1875, William and Alva were married at Calvary Church in New York City.

The couple had three children:

Alva maneuvered Consuelo into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, on November 6, 1895. The marriage was annulled much later, at the Duke's request and Consuelo's assent, in May 1921. The annulment was fully supported by Alva, who testified that she had forced Consuelo into the marriage.[6] By this time Consuelo and her mother enjoyed a closer, easier relationship. Consuelo married Jacques Balsan, a French aeronautics pioneer. William Kissam II became president of the New York Central Railroad Company on his father's death in 1920. Harold Stirling graduated from Harvard Law School in 1910, then joined his father at the New York Central Railroad Company. He remained the only active representative of the Vanderbilt family in the New York Central Railroad after his brother's death, serving as a director and member of the executive committee until 1954.

Second marriage

CBelcourt1895

Belcourt Castle, the Belmont summerhouse in Newport, Rhode Island.

Alva Vanderbilt shocked society in March 1895 when she divorced her husband who had long been unfaithful, at a time when divorce was rare among the elite, and received a large financial settlement said to be in excess of $10 million, in addition to several estates. She already owned Marble House outright. The grounds for divorce were allegations of William's adultery, although there were some who believed that William had hired a woman to pretend to be his seen mistress so that Alva would divorce him.[7]

Alva remarried on January 11, 1896, to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, one of her ex-husband's old friends.[8] Oliver had been a friend of the Vanderbilts since the late 1880s and like William was a great fan of yachting and horseraces. He had accompanied them on at least two long voyages aboard their yacht the Alva. Scholars have written that it seems to have been obvious to many that he and Alva were attracted to one another upon their return from one such voyage in 1889. He was the son of August Belmont, a successful Jewish investment banker for the Rothschild family, and Caroline Perry, the daughter of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry.[9] Oliver died suddenly in 1908, upon which Alva took on the new cause of the women's suffrage movement after hearing a lecture by Ida Husted Harper.[10]

Later life and death

From the early 1920s onward, she lived in France most of the time in order to be near her daughter Consuelo. She restored the 16th century Château d'Augerville and used it as a residence. With Paul, she formed the International Advisory Council of the National Woman's Party and the Auxiliary of American Women abroad. She suffered a stroke in the spring of 1932 that left her partially paralyzed, and she died in Paris of bronchial and heart ailments on January 26, 1933.[10][11] Her funeral at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City featured all female pallbearers and a large contingent of suffragists. She is interred with Oliver Belmont in the Belmont Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York, for which artist Helen Maitland Armstrong designed a set of Renaissance-inspired painted glass windows.[4][12]

Petit Chateau

Main article: Petit Chateau

As a young newlywed, Alva Vanderbilt worked from 1878 to 1882 with Richard Morris Hunt to design a French Renaissance style chateau, known as the Petit Chateau, for her family at 660 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. A contemporary of Vanderbilt's was quoted as saying that "she loved nothing better than to be knee deep in mortar."[1] She held a costume ball that cost $3 million to open the Fifth Avenue château. It was demolished in 1929.[13]

Marble House

Marble House in Newport 02

Marble House in Newport

Main article: Marble House

In 1878, Hunt began work on their Queen Anne style retreat on Long Island, Idle Hour. It would be added to almost continuously until 1889 and burned in 1899. William K. Vanderbilt had a new fireproof mansion rebuilt on the estate and it later became the home of now closed Dowling College.[14]




Children


Offspring of William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849-1920) and Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont
Name Birth Death Joined with
Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877-1964) 2 March 1877 New York City, New York, United States 6 December 1964 Southampton, Suffolk County, New York, United States Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough (1871-1934)
Louis Jacques Balsan (1869-1956)
William Kissam Vanderbilt (1878-1944)
Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884-1970) 6 July 1884 Oakdale, Suffolk County, New York, United States 4 July 1970 Newport, Newport County, Rhode Island, United States Gertrude Lewis Conaway (1901-1978)




Siblings

Residences

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Patterson, Jerry E. The Vanderbilts., pages 120–121. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989. ISBN 0-8109-1748-3
  2. ^ "Society at Home and Abroad". The New York Times. October 28, 1906. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1906/10/28/101804423.pdf. 
  3. ^ "Married Very Quietly". The New York Times. July 22, 1888. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1888/07/22/106329561.pdf. 
  4. ^ a b Viens, Katheryn. "Belmont, Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt". American National Biography Online. http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00052.html. 
  5. ^ Americans (1883). "Americans of Royal Descent". https://books.google.com/books?id=2i0BAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA119. 
  6. ^ Stuart, Amanda Mackenzie.Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and Mother in the Gilded Age, pages 412-425. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. ISBN 0-06-621418-1
  7. ^ Patterson, Jerry E. The Vanderbilts., page 152. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989. ISBN 0-8109-1748-3
  8. ^ "To Wed O. H. P. Belmont. She Is the Divorced Wife of William K. Vanderbilt and the Mother of the Duchess of Marlborough, Whose Recent Wedding Was at Great Social Event. Mr. Belmont Is the Son of the Late August Belmont and Is Himself a Divorced Man. Date of the Domestic Infelicity. Objected to Nights Ashore. Groom to Be Is Popular in Society". The New York Times. January 3, 1896. https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/428242671.html?dids=428242671:428242671&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Jan+03%2C+1896&author=&pub=Chicago+Tribune&desc=TO+WED+O.+H.+P.+BELMONT.&pqatl=google. "Mrs. Alva S. Vanderbilt announced to her friends today that she is engaged to be married to Oliver Belmont." 
  9. ^ Patterson, Jerry E. The Vanderbilts., pages 146-148. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989. ISBN 0-8109-1748-3
  10. ^ a b "Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont Dies at Paris Home". The New York Times. January 26, 1933. https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A11FD3C5C16738DDDAF0A94D9405B838FF1D3. "Shock Suffered Last Spring. Complicated by Bronchial and Heart Ailments. Society Leader was 80. Former Wife of W. K. Vanderbilt. Long Held Sway in New York and in Newport Colony" 
  11. ^ "Mrs. Belmont Dies at 80 in Paris Home". Chicago Daily Tribune. January 26, 1933. https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/442675332.html?dids=442675332:442675332&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Jan+26,+1933&author=&pub=Chicago+Tribune&desc=Mrs.+Belmont+Dies+at+80+in+Paris+Home&pqatl=google. "Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, leader of New York's '400' for a period of many years before and after the turn of the century, died today at her residence here. She was 80 years old. ..." 
  12. ^ Stasz, Clarice (1999). The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour, and Tragedy. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. p. 243. ISBN 1-58348-727-1. 
  13. ^ Kathrens, Michael C. (2005). Great Houses of New York, 1880–1930. New York: Acanthus Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-926494-34-3. 
  14. ^ "Introduction – The First Mansion". Dowling College. http://www.dowling.edu/about/idlehour/intro2.shtm. 

Bibliography

  • Lasch, Christopher. "Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont," in Edward James, ed., Notable American Women (1971)
  • The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour and Tragedy Clarice Stasz. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991; iUniverse, 2000.
  • Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt Arthur T Vanderbilt. Morrow, 1989.
  • Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age. Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.
  • The Barons of Newport: A Guide to the Gilded Age. Terrence Gavan. Newport: Pineapple Publications, 1998. ISBN 0-929249-06-2

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