Augustus C. Gurnee

Augustus Coe Gurnee (March 11, 1855 – July 6, 1926) was an American socialite and art patron during the Gilded Age. Early life Gurnee was born on March 11, 1855, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Mary (née Coe) Gurnee (1820–1893) and capitalist Walter Smith Gurnee (1813–1903), who served as Mayor Chicago from 1851 to 1853 and was the namesake of Gurnee, Illinois. Gurnee attended Harvard University and graduated with the class of 1878. Through his maternal uncle, Dr. Matthew Daniel Coe, he was a first cousin of Frantz Hunt Coe, the physician, public official and educator. Among his siblings was Delia E. Gurnee, Mary Evelyn Gurnee, Frances Medora Gurnee, Walter Scott Gurnee, Grace Gurnee, and Isabel Gurnee. In 1863, the family moved to New York where his father engaged in banking and other businesses, serving as the treasurer and director of the Shelby Iron Company, the American Smelting and Refining Company, and the American Surety Company, among others. Society life After graduating from Harvard, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, he briefly worked as a banker in New York. Gurnee was "free from the necessity of engaging in business" and, instead, spent his time "engrossed in the cultivation of the arts and spent much time in travel, living at intervals in Italy and France."