Catherine Livingston Hamersley

Catherine Livingston Hamersley (8 May 1891 – 23 November 1977) was a New York City, Newport, and Palm Beach society figure, and the first American woman to visit the Najd city of Riyadh, capital of the new state of Saudi Arabia, in 1939. Her other travels included early 20th century visits to Timbuktu, Mali, and she witnessed the 1937 volcano at Rabaul, New Guinea. In 1939 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. Life and Landmark Arabian Travel Catherine Hamersley was born in Manhattan, the daughter of J. Hooker Hamersley, a well-known mogul of the Gilded Age, and Margaret Willing Chisholm. With the death of her father, in 1901, and her mother, in 1904, the orphaned Catherine and her brother, Louis Gordon Hamersley (1892-1942), known as Gordon, were raised by their nanny, Sarah Lowrie at their parents' house at 1030 Fifth Avenue. They inherited over $1.5 million from their parents. Gordon, under the terms of a will left by his cousin Louis Carré Hamersley, inherited an additional $7 million estate. Through these inheritances, Catherine and Gordon owned much of today's Fifth Avenue area properties between Washington Square North and Madison Square Park in New York City, purchased by their 2nd great-grandfather, Andrew Hamersley, in the late 18th century. Catherine and Gordon were known in the early 1900s as "the Hamersley Twins" and were the subject of newspaper articles, fiction, (The Danger Mark, by Robert Chambers), and a Hollywood film. A court case contesting their cousin's will involved his wife, Lily Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, (who had spent the income from her late husband Louis Carré's trust on improving Blenheim palace), and several Hamersley relations. The validity of the will was upheld in two lengthy, contentious, and highly publicized trials in New York State Courts, in which both Catherine and Gordon were prominently featured, and Gordon received the bulk of the estate.