Edith Vanderbilt

Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt Gerry ( Dresser; January 17, 1873 – December 21, 1958) was an American philanthropist and wife of George Washington Vanderbilt II and Peter Goelet Gerry, a United States senator from Rhode Island. Early life Edith Stuyvesant Dresser was born on January 17, 1873, in Newport, Rhode Island, to Major George Warren Dresser (1837–1883) and Susan Fish Le Roy (1834–1883). She was the great-niece of Hamilton Fish (1808–1893), a U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and New York Governor. Through the Fish family, she was a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of Dutch colonial New York through Hamilton Fish's mother, Elizabeth Stuyvesant, Peter Stuyvesant's great-great-granddaughter. She was orphaned at the age of 10 and was raised by her maternal grandmother. Her elder brother was Daniel LeRoy Dresser, a shipbuilder. She and her sisters, collectively known as the "Dresser girls," were: Suzanne Leroy Dresser, who married the French Vicomte, Romain D'Osmoy, Natalie Bayard Dresser, who married John Nicholas Brown, and Pauline Georgina Dresser, who married Rev. George D. Merrill.