Augustus Gibson Paine Jr. (October 19, 1866 – October 23, 1947) was an American paper manufacturer and bank official.[1]
Early life
Paine was born in New York City on October 19, 1866. He was a son of Augustus G. Paine Sr. (1839–1915)[2] and Charlotte M. (née Bedell) Paine (1840–1929).[3] He was educated privately in the United States and Europe.[1]
In 1945, Curtis Publishing Company acquired a 30% interest in the New York and Pennsylvania Company.[5] After his death in 1947, Curtis became the sole owner of the New York and Pennsylvania Co. around 1950.[4]
Ornithology
Paine was an avid hobby ornithologist. At the age of 19 or 20, together with Lewis B. Woodruff, he composed a list of birds of Central Park, counting over 100 species. This was regarded as the first official list of birds of Central Park, and was published in Forest and Stream on June 10, 1886.[6] An article in The New Yorker on August 26, 1974, calls attention to this early list.[7]
His collection of some 1,200 specimens were later donated by his family to the American Museum of Natural History under the name "Augustus Paine and Alvah Jordan collection of birds". A copy of the original catalogue and documents relating to the gift were also given by the family to the museum archive.[8]
Personal life
The Augustus G. Paine Jr. House (the Austrian Consulate General in New York since the 1950s).The Paine Memorial Library in Willsboro.Graves of Augustus G. Paine Jr. and his second wife Francisca Warren in Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx
In 1888, he married Maud Eustis Potts (1865–1919),[1] who converted from the Episcopal Church to Catholicism in 1913.[9] Maud was a daughter of George Potts and Mary Laurette (née Eustis) Potts. Together they were the parents of five sons, all of whom married and had children themselves:[1][10]
Augustus Gibson Paine III (1891–1938), who married Dorothy Marian Quimby (1893–1937), a daughter of Dr. Charles Elihu Quimby.[11]
George Eustis Paine (1894–1953),[12] was chairman of the board of the New York and Pennsylvania Co. until his death. He married Helen Ellis (1895–1948). After her death, he married Katryna Ten Broeck Weed (1897–1962), a daughter of New York State AssemblymanGeorge S. Weed, in 1950.
Alexander Brooks Paine (1898–1976), who married Walburga Kaul Reilly (1902–1942) in 1922.[13] They later divorced before her remarriage and eventual suicide.[14]
Hugh Eustis Paine (1905–1973),[15] who married Helen Clirehugh Duncan (1906–1992)[16] in 1928.[17][18]
Peter Standish Paine (1909-2004), who was president of the New York and Pennsylvania Company. He was also CEO of the Great Northern Nekoosa Corporation. He married Ellen Cadeen Lea, a daughter of Robert C. Lea of Chestnut Hill, in 1933.[19]
Four years after the death of his first wife on June 4, 1919, he married Francisca Machado Warren (1891–1981) at St. John's Memorial Chapel in Cambridge.[20] Francisca daughter of the late Minton Warren, a Latin professor at Johns Hopkins and later Harvard University, and Salomé (née Machado) Warren, who was of Cuban descent.[21] Together Francisca and Augustus were the parents of one daughter:
Francisca Warren Paine (1928–2016), who married David Irwin.[22][23]
After a long illness, Paine died on October 23, 1947, at the age of 81 at his home, 31 East 69th Street in Manhattan.[1] He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His widow lived another three decades until her death on February 8, 1981.
Paine was closely associated with the architect C. P. H. Gilbert, who received a number of commissions from him, such as his townhouse in New York's Upper East Side on 31 East 69th Street in 1917–18.[30] The house was sold to the Austrian government in 1952, the Austrian Consulate General is located in it today.[31][32][33] When Paine was based in Willsboro, Gilbert also received commissions from him to construct the Essex County Bank in 1921.[34] In May 1930, Paine donated $150,000 for a library to the town of Willsboro in memory of his mother.[35] Both the bank and the library were constructed by Gilbert in the Neoclassical style.[36]
In 1885, after moving to Willsboro, Paine began buying land in the area, eventually amassing about 1,000 acres (400 ha), including three miles of Lake Champlain shoreline.[23] There he built his Flat Rock Camp compound,[37] which featured extensive gardens, planted on topsoil laid over the sandstone, which were maintained under the guidance of his first wife, Maud, and, after her death, his second wife Francisca and their daughter. The gardens are listed in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens.[23] The camp and its surrounding property, which includes wetlands, farmland, orchards and forests, are still owned by the Paine family, but in 1978 they were placed under the stewardship of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy to ensure that the land will not be developed in the future.[23]
^John William Leonard (ed.). "WARREN, Salomé Machado". Woman's Who's Who of America. New York: The American Commonwealth Company. p. 851. (Mrs. Minton Warren), 105 Irving St., Boston, Mass. Born Puerto Principe, Island of Cuba; dau. Juan Francisco and Elizabeth Frances (Jones) Machado; grad. Smith Coll., A.B. '83; m. Salem, Mass., Dec. 29, 1885, Prof. Minton Warren, then Latin prof. of Johns Hopkins Univ., later of Harvard Univ. (died 1907); children: Minton Machado, Francisco (sic) Machado. Interested in higher education of women, music, and Romance languages. Mem. Circolo Italiano of Boston. Favors woman suffrage.
^Doane, Ralph Harrington (May 1919). "The Residence of Augustus G. Paine, Esq". The Architectural Review. VIII (5). New York: The Architectural Review, Inc.: 123–126.
