Charles Gaston, Comte de Fontenilliat

Charles Gaston de Fontenilliat, Count of Fontenilliat (27 August 1858 – 30 May 1925) was a French nobleman, soldier, and businessman who married two American heiresses. Early life Gaston was born on 28 August 1858 at Épinay-sur-Seine, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris. He was a son of Baroness Anne Hélène Amélie Marie von Krüdener (1830–1859) and Arthur Jules Philippe, Count of Fontenilliat (1822–1900). His elder brother, Philippe de Fontenilliat, married Adrienne Espinasse, and his elder sister, Helene de Fontenilliat, married Constantin Linder, the wealthy Finnish Lord of Kytäjä. His father, a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, served as Secretary to the French Legation in Sweden in 1853. His paternal grandparents were Jules Philippe de Fontenilliat and Élisabeth Aimée Doyen (daughter of Baron Charles-François Doyen, Receiver-General of Finances of the Loire and Manche, and granddaughter of Jean Doyen, Garde du Corps of Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine). His maternal grandparents were Amélie von Lerchenfeld and Baron Paul Alexander von Krüdener, a nobleman of German Baltic descent who was the Russian Ambassador at the Court of the King of Sweden and Norway, who died of infarction in Stockholm in 1852. After his grandfather's death, Amélie married Count Nikolay Adlerberg in 1855 with whom she lived in Helsinki from 1866 to 1881 during Adlerberg's service as Governor-General of Finland. His grandmother, a celebrated beauty, was herself the illegitimate daughter of Bavarian diplomat Maximilian-Emmanuel, Graf von und zu Lerchenfeld auf Köfering und Schönberg and Duchess Therese of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Career Fontenilliat served as a Second-Lieutenant in the 12th Chasseurs (also known as the Chasseurs de Champagne). Shortly after their marriage, he was forced to resign because "of a scandal created by a girl named Odette, who accused him of having borrowed money of her. She declared that he owed her $8,000" which his wife had to pay part of.