| Sources |
- [S848] Harvard Class 1906, 3rd Report, p. 424.
MAURICE WERTHEIM
Born: New York, N.Y., Feb 16, 1886.
Parents: Jacob Wertheim, Hannah Frank.
School: Dr. J. Sachs' School, New York, N.Y.
Years in College: 1902-1906.
Degrees: A.B., 1906; A.M., 1906 (1907).
Married: Alma Morgenthau, New York, N.Y., April 15, 1909.
Children: Josephine Alma, Oct. 2, 1910; Barbara Helen, Jan. 30, 1912; Ann Rebe, April 20, 1914.
Occupation: Banker.
Address: (Home) 49 West 72nd St., New York, N.Y. (business) 5 Nassau St., New York, N.Y.
In 1906, I entered the publishing business. In 1907, I entered the United Cigar Manufacturing Company. In 1909, I was elected secretary of the Cigar Manufacturing Company; and in 1912, I was elected vice-president of the same company. In 1912, I was appointed by Mayor Gaynor on the commission to draft a new moving-picture law for New York City. I drew what is known as the "Folks ordinance", which was passed by the board of aldermen and has served as a model for moving-picture laws in many cities of the country. It first permitted moving-picture houses of 600 seats. In 1913, I resigned the cigar company, and was appointed by the governor to the New York State Industrial Board, charged with all factory legislation in the state. In 1914, after one and a half years of service, I resigned and went to Turkey, to assist Ambassador Morgenthau. I took a relief fund to Syria and Palestine in September, 1914, on board the United States armored cruiser North Carolina. In 1916, I became associated with Hallgarten and Company, bankers, New York City. Member: City Club of New York, Harmonie Club of New York, Reform Club of New York, Manufacturers' Club, Philadelphia, Harvard Club of New York.
It should be noted that in this publication, Wertheim identified his mother as Hannah Frank, while other sources, such as his obituary in the New York Times, identified his mother as a Hannah Morgenthau. Since this entry was obviously composed by him, and on the assumption that he should have known the birth name of his mother, I have I adjusted this database. I have also not been able to identify a likely Hannah in a Morgenthau family genealogy, including a family relationship tree chart prepared by Henry Morgenthau III and published in "Mostly Morgenthaus, A Family Genealogy." (Ticknor & Fields, New York,1991).
Based on the context, this version of the class report was written about 1916, or shortly thereafter.
- [S542] New York Times, 28 May 1950, p. 44.
M. WERTHEIM DIES; LONG A FINANCIER
Sportsman and Philanthropist Founded Banking Firm Here—Ex-Publisher of Nation
Maurice Wertheim, sportsman, banker and philanthropist, who was former publisher of The Nation, liberal weekly, died of a heart attack last night at his estate in Cos Cob, Conn. He was 64 years old.
Although Mr. Wertheim was founder and president of Wertheim & Co., investment bankers, of 120 Broadway, and a director of several industrial firms, he preferred to be considered a sportsman. He was a trustee of the American Wildlife Foundation, a noted fisherman and a tournament chess player.
Mr. Wertheim was a founder and a former director of the New York Theatre Guild and a patron of exhibitions sponsored by the Sculptors Guild. He was on the advisory committee of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
Donated 1,800 acres to U.S.
In 1947, he donated to the Government 1,800 acres of land bordering Carmans River and Great South Bay in Suffolk County as a wild life refuge.
Mr. Wertheim was an honorary trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and a trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1945 he acted as campaign chairman of the federation's fundraising drive. He was a former president of the American Jewish Committee.
During World War II he served in Washington with the War Production Board and with the War Department. He was president of the Manhattan Chess Club and in 1945 managed a radio chess match played between American and Soviet teams for the benefit of Russian War Relief. The next year he was captain of an American chess team that played a Russian group in Moscow.
Born in New York on February 16, 1886, the son of Jacob and Hannah A. Morgenthau Wertheim, he received A. B. and M. A. degrees from Harvard in 1906 and 1907, respectively.
Served on Industrial Board
He began his business career with the United Cigar Manufacturers Company, now the General Cigar Company, and served as vice president and secretary of the former from 1907 to 1913. For the next two years he was a member of the New York State Industrial Board.
Mr. Wertheim entered investment banking with Hallgarten & Co. in 1915 and was a member of the firm from 1919 to 1926. He founded the company bearing his name in 1927.
He was a director of the Underwood Corporation, the Cuban Atlantic Sugar Company, the Hat Corporation of America and the Bond Stores Company. For many years he was associated with The Nation as a trustee and was its publisher from 1935 to 1937.
Survivors are his widow, Mrs. Cicle Berlage Wertheim, and three daughters, Mrs. Josephine W. Pomerance, Mrs. Barbara W. Tuchman and Mrs. Anne W. Langman.
A funeral service will be held at 2 P.M. tomorrow in his New York home, 43 East Seventieth Street.
While "Hannah A. Morgenthau Wertheim" is cited as Maurice Wertheim's mother in Maurice's New York Times obituary, this is likely an error. He himself identified Hannah Frank as being his mother.
- [S860] Harvard Class 1906 Report: 1931, p. 20-21..
Born: New York, N.Y. Feb. 16, 1886.
Parents: Jacob Wertheim, Hannah Frank.
Prepared at: Dr. J. Sach's School, New York, N.Y.
Years in College: 1902-06.
Degrees: A.B., 1906; A.M., 1906 (1907).
Occupation: Banker.
Married: Alma Morgenthau, New York, N.Y., 1908 (divorced 1929); Ruth White WEarfield, 1930.
Children: Josephine Alma, 1910; Barbara, 1912; Anne Rebe, 1914.
Address: (home) 176 East 75th St., New York, N.Y., and Cos Cob, Conn.;
(business) 57 William St., New York, N.Y.
During the twenty-five years since graduation, my work has been chiefly directed along three lines—business, the theatre, and certain public activities.
After graduation I tried my hand at publishing, then entered my father's company, the United Cigar Manufacturers Company, of which I was an officer for seven years. Finally, in 1915, I went into Wall Street, and in 1919, became a partner in the investment banking firm of Hallgarten & Company. I remained a partner until 1926, and in the following year, formed my own investment firm, known as Wertheim & Company, of which I am still the senior partner.
My chief outside interest during these twenty-five years has been the theatre. From the time of graduation until 1919, I was connected with various amateur groups, whose activities culminated in 1919 in the New York Theatre Guild. Ever since its formation, I have been a member of the board of managers and active in its operations. Up to date the organization has produced over seventy-five plays. I have enjoyed the work very much, since it has more or less balanced the activities of a busy business life.
In 1913 I was appointed a member of the New York State Industrial Board, and served on that board for two or three years, chiefly engaged with my associates in drawing a new labor law for the state. During the war I worked with the war savings committee in Washington, and later went to Persia as finance member of the American Persian Relief Commission, under the leadership of the late Dr. Harry Pratt Judson, then president of the University of Chicago.
I have traveled much, particularly in the Near East, and almost every European country, except Russia, which I am hoping to visit very shortly, as I feel that no one should miss the present opportunity of studying there one of the most interesting experiments in the development of a new social order that has ever been attempted.
As to recreation, my chief interest is fishing—principally fresh water fishing for trout and salmon. I can hardly remember any month of May that I have not been on some trout stream or other, and one of the favorite gibes of my friends is their reminder to me that I was admitted to partnership in Hallgarten & Company on May 1, 1919, and that on the 8th of may went on a fishing vacation.
Sometimes, in a light moment, I say about myself that my chief interests in life are banking, the theatre and fishing, but that their importance to me is in the inverse of the order named.
- [S260] Obituary: Maurice Wertheim.
- [S104] 1910 Census, Series: T624; Roll: 1045; Page: 282A; Enumeration District: 1304; Part: 2; Line: 28..
- [S542] New York Times, August 22, 2004.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/nyregion/an-estate-and-a-family-are-split.html?src=pm.
An Estate, and a Family, Are Split
By AVI SALZMAN
BARBARA W. TUCHMAN used to hike up to a tiny wooden cabin, no larger than 100 square feet, on her Cos Cob estate, to sift through notecards of research and type the history books that would make her famous. She could look across the valley from there and watch the deer gathering on the opposite hill at dusk.
Ms. Tuchman twice won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the best known historians of the 20th century. Her greatest legacy will always be those books, which have sat on the nightstands of presidents. But this land in Cos Cob, she felt, was another kind of legacy. Near the end of her life, she feared that her three daughters would sell it and she wrote them impassioned letters imploring them to keep it in the family.
It was not to be.
A few years after Ms. Tuchman's husband died, two of her daughters sued the third, attempting to divide the land and sell their portions. The dispute has lasted four years.
Earlier this month, a judge divided the 43.4 acres that remain of the estate. Cos Cob is part of Greenwich and the town plans to buy about two-thirds of the property, while Alma, 56, Ms. Tuchman's youngest daughter, will continue to own and live on the 12.52 acres left. She will likely appeal the ruling.
Barbara Tuchman's father, Maurice Wertheim, a wealthy banker, bought the approximately 120-acre estate in 1912, the same year she was born. She was raised in New York, but spent weekends and summers in Cos Cob riding horses, swimming in the pond and enjoying the natural beauty of the land. Greenwich residents sometimes got to enjoy the property, too. John B. Margenot Jr., a longtime Greenwich resident and former first selectman, said he remembers skating at the Tuchmans' pond with other children.
''They were good about things like that,'' he said.
Ms. Tuchman graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and married Dr. Lester Reginald Tuchman, a New York internist, in 1939. Around the end of World War II, the couple moved into a building that held a chicken coop and potting house on the Cos Cob property. The Tuchmans still lived in New York, but went to the house on weekends and during the summer. Their three children rode horses in a ring next to the house and rowed a canoe to an island in the middle of the seven-acre pond for picnics.
Meanwhile, Barbara Tuchman became famous. Her book ''Guns of August,'' about the beginning of World War I, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962. She ''treated herself'' to the writer's cabin with its stone fireplace using the proceeds from one of her books, said Alma Tuchman. When she was deep into a book, she would climb the hill to the cabin at 7 a.m. and stay there for the next 12 hours, save for a trip back to the house for a sandwich, which she would carry back on a tray, Alma Tuchman recalled.
The telegram informing Ms. Tuchman that she had won her first Pulitzer Prize still hangs in her study in the house, next to a picture of former President Jimmy Carter with a note attached assuring Ms. Tuchman that the president was reading her book.
Though the world was lining up at the door, the family became less apt to open the property to members of the community as time went on: ''It wasn't any longer a small-town community,'' Alma Tuchman said.
Late in life, Lester and Barbara Tuchman moved to Cos Cob for good and Ms. Tuchman continued working on her books. She still had a book on the best-seller list when she died in 1989.
While she was still alive, Ms. Tuchman had deeded the property to her daughters to share evenly.
Alma Tuchman retired from her job as a journalist and moved to the property in the late 1980's, but her sisters lived in other parts of the country. Lucy Eisenberg, a retired lawyer, lives in Los Angeles. Another sister, Jessica Mathews, is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Ms. Eisenberg said she did not want to comment about the property. Ms. Mathews did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Barbara Tuchman insisted nothing be done with the property for 10 years after her death, Alma Tuchman said. She wanted the land to remain in the family's hands because it had given her ''a basic happiness and comfort ever since our establishment here as a family,'' Barbara wrote in a ''letter to my family'' in 1988. In the letter, she specifically warned against selling it to the town to use ''as a park or so-called 'open space.'''
But after the 10 years passed, the dispute began, pitting the sisters against each other. Alma Tuchman wanted to remain living on the land and preserve the entire parcel for the family, but her sisters wanted to claim their own portions, eventually deciding to sell them to the town.
With the sisters unable to resolve differences, Ms. Eisenberg and Ms. Mathews sued Alma Tuchman in October 2000. The case dragged on: The file has five parts and is about six inches thick, its own epic history.
Ms. Eisenberg and her husband, David, have created a trust to control their piece of property. In June 2001, the town of Greenwich entered into an agreement with Ms. Mathews and the Eisenbergs to purchase their share of the property for $8.67 million. In May 2002, the town intervened in the lawsuit to protect its interest.
The decision came back Aug. 4. The judge, David R. Tobin, split the land into two pieces, giving about two-thirds to Ms. Eisenberg and her sister and one-third to Alma Tuchman. Her 12.52-acre portion, which will be maintained as a private estate, is worth $9,525,000, according to Judge Tobin's ruling.
The land given to the two other sisters is 30.74 acres and is worth $18,050,000, the judge said. All of this is subject to appeal. The Eisenbergs and Ms. Mathews have agreed to make a charitable donation to the town to make up the difference between the value of the land and the price they have already negotiated.
Alma Tuchman said she no longer speaks to her two sisters. Barbara Tuchman, she said, would be ''appalled and sickened'' by what happened.
The town has not yet decided what it will do with the land, though it has expressed interest in allowing it to remain undeveloped as open space. The town has already purchased the adjacent Pomerance property, part of Mr. Wertheim's original estate and deeded to another one of his daughters. The town allows the public to use it. The parcel owned by Ms. Mathews and the Eisenberg trust could be added to the Pomerance parcel to create one larger piece of open space.
Jim Lash, the first selectman of Greenwich, said the town planned to review the ruling once it is final and decide what to do. He said he foresees three options for the land: open space, playing fields, or low-income housing.
''There are a number of possibilities there,'' he said last week.
Alma Tuchman, a conservationist who talks about the threatened species on the property and the various kinds of weeds clinging to the trees, is concerned that even if the town decided to keep the land as open space, it won't spend money on maintenance. The Pomerance property has already been overtaken in spots by weeds, and last week garbage and a discarded beer can floated in the pond.
''Over all it's very admirable in concept for the town to spend so much money acquiring open space, but I think it's also irresponsible to acquire land that you cannot take care of, and I think it's clear that the town can't take care of what it already has acquired,'' she said. ''Open space becomes nobody's land and nobody's responsibility.''
- [S129] 1930 Census, Roll: 257; Page: 51B; Enumeration District: 134; Image: 836.0.
- [S857] Email Memorandum: Richard Thomas, “W ertheim bought refuge land piecemeal; email; 9 January 2010; distribution list.
http://brookhavensouthhaven.org/history/wertheim/childs-erickson.pdf
- [S861] Degas ro Matisse: The Maurice Wertheim Collection, p. 9. http://brookhavensouthhaven.org/history/Wertheim/WertheimDegasToMatisse.htm.
- [S861] Degas ro Matisse: The Maurice Wertheim Collection, p. 27.
The significance of his position as head of the American Jewish Committee elicited a remarkable letter from Joseph Willen, an important committee member. In his letter, Willin urged Wertheim to shed his persona of "banker" and, pro bono publico, emphasize the side of his personality that exhibited the temperament of an "artist." About Wertheim the banker "banker," Willen wrote as follows:
"I trust that our friendship gives me the right to speak plainly. For thirty years you have been a banker—or so you like to describe yourself. Of course, a banker who has played an impressive role in American theatre, in liberal journalism, and in the world of art. But always you insist upon the term "banker." I won't quarrel unduly with this, having my own healthy respect for what is indicated by the tterm "banker." I know your great capacity for seeing facts and understanding them, that tough-mindedness (in the sense that William James used it), that acumen and sober judgment that so characterize you and several other successful bankers of my acquaintance. I believe that [the presidency] calls upon you for a kind of human expression that perhaps is not synonymous with the concept of "banker." The sober fact is, like it or not, you, more than any rabbi, are now the spiritual leader of a great section of American Jewry."
- [S858] WNWR website.
- [S859] FOW website.
The Friends of Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge (FOW) is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to the enduring protection, management and appreciation of Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge and its environs.
- [S381] Ancestry Trees, Van Tassell Family Tree. http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/24819/person/240321218?ssrc=.
- [S289] Connecticut Death Index.
- [S77] WorldConnect, http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:a12141&id=I0643.
- [S542] New York Times, 17 May 1935, p. 24.
MRS. R. W. WERTHEIM WED TO SMALLENS
Her Divorce From Banker Is Revealed in News of Bridal Ceremony in Reno
BRIDEGROOM A MUSICIAN
He Is Conductor at Stadium and Associate Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra
Alexander Smallens, symphony and opera conductor, and Mrs. Ruth White Wertheim, former wife of Maurice Wertheim, banker, art patron and owner of the weekly publication The Nation, were married on Tuesday in Reno, Nev., according to word received yesterday.
The marriage is of particular interest, because it was unexpected. It was not generally known that the former Miss Ruth White's marriage to Mr. Wertheim had been terminated by a divorce on Monday. This was learned last night in a dispatch from Reno.
This is the third marriage for Mrs. Smallens. Her first husband was Frederic P. Warfield of Port Chester, N.Y., a prominent patent attorney and horse show exhibitor. She was married to Mr. Wertheim in the early Spring of 1930, several months after Mr. Wertheim's marriage to the former Miss Alma Morgenthau, daughter of Henry Morganthau, former Ambassador to Turkey, had been terminated by divorce.
Mrs. Smallens is a composer and had been a patroness of music for several years. She was instrumental in the establishment of the New York Music School in this city and has composed incidental music for Shakespearean productions here.
Mr. Smallens is associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and for the last two seasons has been conducting at the Lewisohn Stadium concerts. Last Winter he shared the conducting of opera productions of the Philadelphia Orchestra season with Fritz Reiner. Mr. Smallens and his bride will return to New York the latter part of this month, when he will prepare for the eight week season at the stadium, which opens June 26. He will conduct all the opera and ballet performances during this period.
Mr. Smallens was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, now Leningrad, in 1889, the son of a Russian army officer. He was brought to this country as an infant. He was graduated from City College and from the Institute of Musical Art here. He spent two years at the Paris Conservatory of Music, and upon his return became assistant conductor at the Boston Opera House.
In 1917, Mr. Smallens joined the late Anna Pavlowa's ballet company as conductor and for two years toured South America and the West Indies with the famous dancer. Upon his return he conducted at the Chicago Opera Company for three years. It was at Chicago that he conducted the world premier of Prokofieff's "Love for Three Oranges."
Mr. Smallens went to Philadelphia in 1924 and became musical director of the former Philadelphia Civic Opera Company.
- [S542] New York Times, 2 Jun 1944, p. 2.
MRS. C. B. SEIBERLING WED
Widow of Tire Manufacturer is Bride of Maurice Wertheim
The marriage of Mrs. Cecile B. Seiberling of 2 Sutton Place South, formerly of Akron, Ohio, to Maurice Wertheim, also of this city, took place yesterday in the home of the bride. The ceremony was performed by Chief Judge Irving Lehman of the Court of Appeals in the presence of members of the families.
Mrs. Wertheim is the widow of Charles W. Seiberling Jr., formerly of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Mr. Wertheim is head of the investment banking firm of Wertheim & Co.
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