Frederic W. Rhinelander

Frederic William Rhinelander (February 12, 1828 – September 24, 1904) was an American who was prominent in New York society during the Gilded Age and served as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Early life Rhinelander was born in New York City on February 12, 1828. He was the only son of four children born to Frederic William Rhinelander (1796–1836) and Mary Lucretia "Lucy Ann" (née Stevens) Rhinelander (1798–1877). Among his sisters was Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, who married George Frederic Jones (parents of novelist and decorator Edith (née Jones) Wharton and Frederic Rhinelander Jones); Mary Elizabeth Rhinelander, who married Thomas Haines Newbold (parents of New York State Senator Thomas Newbold); and Eliza Lucille Rhinelander, who married William Edgar. His paternal grandparents were William Rhinelander and Mary (née Robert) Rhinelander, and his uncles included Philip Rhinelander, a member of the U.S. Congress, William Christopher Rhinelander (grandfather of T.J. Oakley Rhinelander and great-grandfather of Anita de Braganza), and New York City Alderman John Robert Rhinelander. His paternal grandmother was the daughter of Col. Robert, an officer under Gen. George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. His mother was the twelfth and last child of Major General Ebenezer Stevens and his second wife, Lucretia (née Ledyard) Sands Stevens. Among his maternal uncles were banker John Austin Stevens (father of John Austin Stevens, founder of the Sons of the Revolution), and surgeon Alexander Hodgdon Stevens. From his grandmother's first marriage, he was a cousin of the banker Samuel Stevens Sands. Rhinelander's great-great grandfather, Philip Jacob Rhinelander, was a German-born French Huguenot who immigrated to the United States in 1686 following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settling in the newly formed French Huguenot community of New Rochelle, where he amassed considerable property holdings which became the basis for the Rhinelander family's wealth.