Harry Payne Bingham

Henry Payne Bingham (December 9, 1887 – March 25, 1955) was an American financier, sportsman, art patron and philanthropist. He funded a series of expeditions to study marine life. Early life He was born in 1887 to Charles William Bingham (1846–1929), a wealthy Cleveland industrialist, and Mary (née Payne) Bingham (1854–1898). His siblings included Oliver Perry Bingham; William H. Bingham; Elizabeth Beardsley Bingham, who married Dudley Stuart Blossom; and Frances Payne Bingham, a U.S. Representative from 1940 to 1969 who married fellow Representative Chester Bolton. His paternal grandparents were William Bingham and Elizabeth (née Beardsley) Bingham. His maternal grandparents were Henry B. Payne, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and Mary (née Perry) Payne. His mother's siblings included Nathan P. Payne, the mayor of Cleveland; Flora Payne, who married Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney; Howard Payne, the namesake of Howard Payne University; and Oliver H. Payne, a Standard Oil executive who died in 1917 without children, leaving several million dollars and his Esopus estate in the Hudson River Valley known as "Omega" to Bingham, his nephew. Bingham prepared at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale University in 1910 where he was a classmate and roommate of Robert A. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft who was later a U.S. Senator. The Taft School was run by Horace Dutton Taft, brother of the President and uncle of his roommate.