This collection includes Catharine Lorillard Wolfe’s side of the correspondence between her and Sarah Griswold Spencer. As there are only a handful of letters across a five-year period, it is not known whether there are additional letters now missing from either correspondent. In the extant letters, Wolfe discusses family developments, including the wedding of Spencer’s son Lorillard; Wolfe’s new home, Vinland, in Newport; and Wolfe’s request for Spencer to commission clothing for her at the House of Worth.
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Description or title of item, PSNCA.H.014: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe letters to Sarah Griswold Spencer, Box #, Folder #, Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, RI.
Photographs are arranged in one series chronologically and inventoried at the item level.
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1828-1887) was an art collector and philanthropist, a chief benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. After inheriting a large fortune from her father, merchant John David Wolfe, she participated heavily in charitable giving both in secular and religious organizations. Her mother was Dorothea Ann Lorillard (1798-1866), daughter of Peter Lorillard II (1764-1943), a wealthy magnate with interests in tobacco, real estate, and other industries. At Catharine Wolfe’s death, obituaries claimed she was the richest unmarried woman in the United States, or even in the world. She maintained an extensive collection of art and rare books. She resided in New York and summered in Newport, Rhode Island, building the mansion “Vinland” on Ochre Point Avenue.
Wolfe’s first cousin Lorillard Spencer was the father of another Lorillard Spencer (1827-1888), the husband of Sarah Johnson Griswold (1827-1905). Spencer and Griswold married in 1847 and had at least five children: Eleanore Spencer (1851-1915), Sarah Griswold Spencer (1853-1854), William Augustus Spencer (1855-1912), Charles G. Spencer (1856-1906), and Lorillard Spencer, Jr. (1859-1912). The family lived in Paris for many years, first moving overseas in 1858.
The Preservation Society holds two scrapbooks of clippings and ephemera related to Wolfe's Vinland estate.