Personal life
On 20 October 1897, Harjes was married to heiress Marie Robertina Graves (1873–1905) at "My Fancy", the country home of Malcolm Webster Ford in Babylon on Long Island. Ford was married to Marie's sister, the former Janet Wilhelmina Graves. She was a daughter of Robert Graves and Cesarine (née Barbey) Graves. Together, they were the parents of two daughters:
Hope Dorothy Harjes (1898–1923), who died in a riding accident.
Cesarine Amelia Marie Harjes (1899–1949), who married banker Ralph Wormely Curtis (1908–1973), a son of Ralph Wormeley Curtis, in 1930.
After the death of his first wife in Carlsbad, New Mexico from tuberculosis in 1905, he remarried several years later to Frederica Vesta (née Berwind) Gilpin (1884–1954) on 20 February 1911 at the church in the Rue de Berri. Frederica, who was divorced from Charles Gilpin III in January 1911, was a daughter of Charles Frederick Berwind (brother of Edward Julius Berwind and Julia Berwind) and Anita (née Hickman) Berwind. Two of her sisters Edith, Baroness von Kleist, and Fanny, Countess von Montgelas, married into the German aristocracy. Together, Frederica and Henry lived at 49 rue de la Faisanderie in Paris (which won the Concours de façades de la ville de Paris in 1905 and was designed by Danish architect Hans-Georg Tersling) were the parents of:
Charles Berwind Harjes (1904–1952), who married Elizabeth Schuster (1913–1980) in 1935.
Henry Herman Harjes Jr. (1912–1994), who married Joan Blake (1916–1983), a granddaughter of William Phipps Blake and half-sister of Mrs. Irving Berlin, in 1934. They divorced in 1947, and he married Tauni de Lesseps (1915–2001), a granddaughter of Ferdinand de Lesseps, in 1947.
John Frederick Harjes (1914–1972), a Cambridge University graduate who married, and divorced, twice.
In 1920, he acquired from the Duke de Vallombrosa the Château d'Abondant, a four story château set on 200 acres of landscaped grounds outside of Paris. The Château d'Abondant was designed by architect Jean Mansart de Jouy and was among a trio of châteaus located near Dreux, in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France, including Château d'Anet and Château Saint-Georges Motel (owned by Consuelo Vanderbilt). near Paris. His son Henry sold the Château in 1937 to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter of Paris and his wife, the former Pannonica Rothschild.
Harjes died on 20 August 1926 in Deauville. An elaborate funeral officiated by The Reverend Frederick W. Beekman at The American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, of which Harjes had been a vestryman since 1903 and treasurer, was attended by J.P. Morgan, Dwight Morrow, Benjamin Strong, S. Parker Gilbert, General John J. Pershing and John Grier Hibben. He was buried at Versailles. He left his entire estate to his wife and three children, with his wife and John Ridgeley Carter as co-executors. The American Cathedral vestry honored him as the longest-serving vestry member and remarked: "He made America to be honored in France."
Ten years after his death, his wife remarried to Seton Porter (in 1936), and lived at 834 Fifth Avenue in New York City. She died in Newport, Rhode Island in June 1954.
