Clarence Hungerford Mackay (; April 17, 1874 – November 12, 1938) was an American financier. He was chairman of the board of the Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation and president of the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company.

Early life

He was born on April 17, 1874 in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

to Louise Antoinette (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Hungerford) Bryant Mackay (1843–1928) and

John William Mackay John William Mackay (November 28, 1831 – July 20, 1902) was an Irish-American industrialist. Mackay was one of the four Bonanza Kings, a partnership which capitalised on the wealth generated by the silver mines at the Comstock Lode. He als ...

. His father was a silver miner and

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

mogul who had been born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

and emigrated to America with his parents. Soon after arriving in America, John's father died, and John sold newspapers and got a shipyard job to support his mother and sister. Eventually, he went west, and with three partners, formed a mining corporation and discovered the " Big Bonanza" in Virginia City, Nevada, which became the largest single deposit of gold and silver ever found. More than $100 million worth of gold ($ in today's currency) was extracted from that mine before it was exhausted in 1898, making all of them unimaginably wealthy. His father then married his mother and adopted her daughter by an earlier marriage. They lived between Paris and New York, where they brought up this daughter and their two sons, John and Clarence.

Career

Clarence sold his major source of income, the Postal Telegraph Company, to the new

International Telephone and Telegraph Company ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. ITT's three businesses ...

(ITT) for an enormous amount of stock. The 1929 stock market crash wiped him out. He survived the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

by selling his art and antiques. He was eventually reconciled with his daughter Ellin and her husband Irving Berlin when he went to comfort her on the

cot death Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. Diagnosis requires that the death remain unexplained even after a thorough autopsy and detailed death scene investigation. SIDS usual ...

of her baby. Irving Berlin always treated his father-in-law with respect and affection. Both Ellin Berlin and Clarence's granddaughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, were successful writers.

Personal life

Around 1897, Mackay met Katherine Alexander Duer (1880–1930), a debutante from an old, high society, New York family that he met on a steamship crossing between New York and England. She was a descendant of Lady Kitty Duer, daughter of

Lord Stirling William Alexander, also known as Lord Stirling (1726 – 15 January 1783), was a Scottish-American major general during the American Revolutionary War. He was considered male heir to the Scottish title of Earl of Stirling through Scottish line ...

. They fell in love and were married on May 17, 1898. Harbor Hill in Roslyn, Long Island, the site of their future estate with the striking view of Hempstead Harbor, was Katherine's and Clarie's wedding present from the senior Mackays. Katherine oversaw much of the design and building of their mansion at Harbor Hill which was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead, and White and was the largest home White ever designed. Katherine was a

suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...

and a champion of women's rights and became the first woman member of the Roslyn school board in 1905. Together, Clarence and Katherine were the parents of three children: * Katherine Mackay (1900–1971), who married Kenneth O'Brien (1895–1954) in 1922. They divorced and she remarried to Robert Ziemer Hawkins (1903–1979) in 1938. *

Ellin Mackay Ellin Berlin (née Mackay, 22 March 1903 – 29 July 1988) was an American author. She was the wife of Irving Berlin and the daughter of Clarence Mackay and Katherine Duer Mackay. She met Irving Berlin in 1924, and her father opposed marriage from ...

(1903–1988), who fell in love with the popular composer Irving Berlin, to the fury of her father. Berlin was a Russian immigrant, an Orthodox Jewish widower fifteen years older than she. When Ellin insisted on marrying Berlin in 1926, Clarence disinherited her. However, Berlin was already wealthy at this stage, the most popular songwriter of his time. * John William Mackay (1907–1988), who married Josephine Gwendolyn Rose (1908–2004) in 1929. In 1910, Katherine left Clarence and her three children to run away with Dr. Joseph Blake. Blake in turn ran away with her nurse. The marriage officially ended in divorce in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

in 1914. Katherine returned to New York in 1930, the same year she died from cancer. Because of religious convictions (he was a traditional Irish-American Catholic), Mackay would not remarry as long as his first wife, Katherine, lived. Therefore, Clarence and

Anna Case Anna Case (October 29, 1887 - January 7, 1984) was an American operatic soprano. She recorded with Thomas Alva Edison, who used her voice extensively in "tone tests" of whether a live audience could tell the difference between the actual singer ...

(1888–1984) waited until after Katherine's death in 1930, and were subsequently married in on July 18, 1931, at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Roslyn, New York. His wedding gift to Case was a platinum-set emerald and diamond necklace. The emerald was mined in

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

and the necklace designed by

Cartier Cartier may refer to: People * Cartier (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * Cartier Martin (born 1984), American basketball player Places * Cartier Island, an island north-west of Australia that is part of Australia' ...

. Case was a lyric soprano who sang with the Metropolitan Opera and as a concert soloist. "Her life changed dramatically following an engagement to sing at a private musicale given in the home of Clarence H. Mackay (c. 1916). Taken with her beauty, he sent a carload of flowers to her at her next

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

recital, enclosing a small diamond band with an enamel bluebird in the center." He died of cancer on November 12, 1938. His funeral was at St. Patrick's Cathedral where the New York Philharmonic played. He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Legacy

Anna Case Mackay donated her diamond necklace to the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

in 1984. Clarence Mackay was a noted collector of medieval suits of armor, some of which he sold to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in the early 1930s. An aviation trophy, administered by the United States National Aeronautic Association and awarded yearly by the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

for the "most meritorious flight of the year" by an Air Force person, persons, or organization, is named in Mackay's honor. The

Mackay Mountains The Mackay Mountains () are a prominent group of peaks south of the Allegheny Mountains in the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. They were discovered by the Byrd Antarctic Expedition in 1934, and named for Clarence Mackay Clarence ...

are a prominent group of peaks south of the

Allegheny Mountains The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...

in the Ford Ranges of

Marie Byrd Land Marie Byrd Land (MBL) is an unclaimed region of Antarctica. With an area of , it is the largest unclaimed territory on Earth. It was named after the wife of American naval officer Richard E. Byrd, who explored the region in the early 20th centur ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. They were discovered by the Byrd Antarctic Expedition in 1934, and named for Clarence Mackay, a benefactor of the expedition.

Notes

References

External links

*
Mrs. Clarence Mackay (Katherine Duer)
From a scrapbook in the Carrie Chapman Catt Collection in the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mackay, Clarence 1874 births 1948 deaths American Roman Catholics American people of Irish descent Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery People from Roslyn, New York Businesspeople from New York City American racehorse owners and breeders