Louisa Barnewall Van Rensselaer

Louisa Barnewall Van Rensselaer (October 12, 1836 – July 3, 1920), was a prominent member of New York Society during the Gilded Age. Early life Louisa was born on October 12, 1836, in New York City. She was the daughter of William Barnewall (1792–1874), an attorney, and Clementina (née Rutgers) Barnewall (1800–1838), who married in 1818. After her mother's death when Louisa was only 2 years old, her father remarried to Anne Coles (1808–1885). Among her siblings was Elizabeth Barnewall (1825–1867), who married Alfred Schermerhorn; Morris Barnewall (1834–1895), who married Eliza Antoinette Hall. Her maternal grandparents were Nicholas Gouverneur Rutgers, an attorney, and Cornelia (née Livingston) Rutgers. Society life In 1892, Louisa (who at that point was a widow following her husband's death in 1878) along with her two unmarried daughters Mabel and Alice, and her married daughter Louisa and her husband Edmund, were all included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.