Catharine Lorillard Wolfe

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (8 March 1828 – 4 April 1887) was an American philanthropist and art collector. Though she gave large amounts of money to institutions such as Grace Episcopal Church and Union College, her most significant gifts were two bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She left her large collection of popular contemporary paintings to the museum, together with $200,000. Early life and family Wolfe was the daughter of John David Wolfe (1792–1872), and Dorothea Ann Lorillard (1798–1866). Her father was a New York merchant and real estate developer who was the president and a founder of the American Museum of Natural History while her mother was a partial inheritor of the Lorillard tobacco fortune. Her sister was Mary Lorillard Wolfe (1823–1847), who was married to William Bayard Hoffman (d. 1880) before her early death, and her brother was David Lorillard Wolfe (1825–1829), who died young. Her paternal grandfather was David Wolfe (1748–1836), an officer during the Revolution in the Paymaster's department, and her maternal grandfather was Pierre Lorillard II (1764–1843), both of New York. Her aunt, Catherine Wolfe, married George Bruce (1781–1866). Life Wolfe led a private and sheltered life after the death of her mother in 1867. After the death of her father in 1872, she inherited the family fortune which was estimated at $12,000,000, which she used to continue their philanthropic activities. She supported the Newsboys' Lodging House and Industrial School (an outgrowth of Charles Loring Brace's movement to help care for New York's homeless children); she financed archaeological missions, including one that unearthed Nippur; she was also involved with the American Museum of Natural History. She provided $10,000, half the funding for the creation of Bishop Whitaker's School for Girls in Reno, Nevada, on the condition that Episcopal Bishop Ozi William Whitaker raise the other half from other sources. The school was founded in 1876 and operated until 1894.