Martin Williams
Member
It is odd that the career of James Clinch Smith has so far gone unrecorded on the board. In both the press reports of the day and the testimony of his close friend, Colonel Archibald Gracie, it is easy to trace his biography - almost up until the precise moment of his death on the morning of Monday, 15th April, 1912.
Smith was a direct descendant of 'Bullrider' Smith (alternatively, 'Smythe'), a seventeenth-century English settler who, upon his arrival in the New World, made a pact with the local Indians that he could keep all the land he could ride over in one day whilst seated upon a bull. No doubt contrary to their expectations, he managed to remain upon his uncomfortable mount from dawn until dusk and the vast tract of land he thus acquired became the site of the eponymous Smithtown, Long Island. His family remained in situ for the next three centuries. James Clinch's father, Judge J. Lawrence Smith, owned a Colonial-style mansion there which still survives today - albeit much modified by his son-in-law, the famous Gilded Age architect, Stanford White. A white marble bas-relief of White's wife Cornelia Smith was carved by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and can today be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/astg/ho_1976.388.htm
The various Smith siblings were seemingly quite close - White and Cornelia (or 'Bessie' as she was known) were married by the clergyman husband of her sister, Kate; they lived near to one another, in houses either designed or altered by White; and they were spectacularly enriched by the legacies left to them in 1886 by their aunt, Cornelia Clinch Stewart, the widow of department store tycoon, A.T. Stewart (famous for being one of the three richest men in the States at the outbreak of the Civil War - the other two being Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor). In May 1895, the engagement was announced between our own James Clinch Smith and Bertha Ludington Barnes of Chicago - an engagement which was, The New York Times noted, calculated to 'put the noses of match-making mothers out-of-joint'. As well it might - not only was Smith extremely wealthy (his Stewart inheritance was estimated to have been in the region of $3,000,000) but he was also a very popular man-about-town. Indeed, three years previously, his name had featured on Caroline Astor's original list of the 'Four Hundred' - an honour which elevated him to the very highest echelons of Society and which was conferred on only one other Titanic passenger, Colonel John Jacob Astor. On her side, Bertha brought both beauty and elegance to the match. When her portrait by Wilhelm H. Funk was exhibited in 1898, the critic from The Times went into raptures - she was painted 'in profile, with a light summer evening gown on white stuff just falling from her shoulders and with her finely turned head just raised...there is a wild rose in the dark brown hair, the only bit of colour in the portrait, which is painted in a low key and is cool and soft in colour and tone...very effective are the regular classic features and the delicate complexion against the cool grey background'. In addition to her looks, Bertha was also reported to be a very talented musician. The couple were married on 5 June, 1895, at Grace Church in Chicago. Numbered among the guests was Pierrepont Isham, the brother of future Titanic victim Anne Isham, and the officiating clergyman was Reverend Ernest M. Stires. He obviously maintained impressive connections among his Society flock, since he later went on to preside at the weddings of Tyrell Cavendish to Julia Siegel in 1906, and Margaret Hays to Dr Charles Easton in 1913.
Smith was a direct descendant of 'Bullrider' Smith (alternatively, 'Smythe'), a seventeenth-century English settler who, upon his arrival in the New World, made a pact with the local Indians that he could keep all the land he could ride over in one day whilst seated upon a bull. No doubt contrary to their expectations, he managed to remain upon his uncomfortable mount from dawn until dusk and the vast tract of land he thus acquired became the site of the eponymous Smithtown, Long Island. His family remained in situ for the next three centuries. James Clinch's father, Judge J. Lawrence Smith, owned a Colonial-style mansion there which still survives today - albeit much modified by his son-in-law, the famous Gilded Age architect, Stanford White. A white marble bas-relief of White's wife Cornelia Smith was carved by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and can today be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/astg/ho_1976.388.htm
The various Smith siblings were seemingly quite close - White and Cornelia (or 'Bessie' as she was known) were married by the clergyman husband of her sister, Kate; they lived near to one another, in houses either designed or altered by White; and they were spectacularly enriched by the legacies left to them in 1886 by their aunt, Cornelia Clinch Stewart, the widow of department store tycoon, A.T. Stewart (famous for being one of the three richest men in the States at the outbreak of the Civil War - the other two being Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor). In May 1895, the engagement was announced between our own James Clinch Smith and Bertha Ludington Barnes of Chicago - an engagement which was, The New York Times noted, calculated to 'put the noses of match-making mothers out-of-joint'. As well it might - not only was Smith extremely wealthy (his Stewart inheritance was estimated to have been in the region of $3,000,000) but he was also a very popular man-about-town. Indeed, three years previously, his name had featured on Caroline Astor's original list of the 'Four Hundred' - an honour which elevated him to the very highest echelons of Society and which was conferred on only one other Titanic passenger, Colonel John Jacob Astor. On her side, Bertha brought both beauty and elegance to the match. When her portrait by Wilhelm H. Funk was exhibited in 1898, the critic from The Times went into raptures - she was painted 'in profile, with a light summer evening gown on white stuff just falling from her shoulders and with her finely turned head just raised...there is a wild rose in the dark brown hair, the only bit of colour in the portrait, which is painted in a low key and is cool and soft in colour and tone...very effective are the regular classic features and the delicate complexion against the cool grey background'. In addition to her looks, Bertha was also reported to be a very talented musician. The couple were married on 5 June, 1895, at Grace Church in Chicago. Numbered among the guests was Pierrepont Isham, the brother of future Titanic victim Anne Isham, and the officiating clergyman was Reverend Ernest M. Stires. He obviously maintained impressive connections among his Society flock, since he later went on to preside at the weddings of Tyrell Cavendish to Julia Siegel in 1906, and Margaret Hays to Dr Charles Easton in 1913.
