Peter Marié's collection

Many years ago, now, I visited a cousin outside Baltimore with the marvelous name of Camille Steward Marié (1918-2002).[1] He was the son of one of my great-grandfather’s first cousins, but because of the way our families were constructed, Camille was closer in age to my father than to my grandfather, his actual second cousin. In part this was due to the two marriages of our common ancestor, John Steward (1777-1854): I am descended from the first one, while Camille’s grandmother was the sole survivor of the second.

There were actually two Steward-Marié marriages during the nineteenth century: Camille married Rachel Steward in 1856, and his brother Albin married Rachel’s niece Sarah Slosson a year later. Today, the most famous member of this Marié generation was a third brother, Peter, whose collection of portrait miniatures adorns the New-York Historical Society.

I had the impression that Peter Marié’s collection – of society beauties from the last decades of the nineteenth century – contained images of my Steward relatives, some of them members of the Marié family, and I recently found an early list of Peter’s bequest to confirm it.

In addition to subjects still well-known today, like Mrs. Edward Wharton (the novelist Edith Wharton), Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt (the former Anna Rebecca Hall, and the mother of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the actress Maude Adams, Peter collected several images of Steward (as well as Marié) connections:

• my great-grandmother, Margaret Atherton Beeckman (Mrs. Campbell Steward), by Fernand Paillet;
• her sister-in-law, Cordelia Schermerhorn Jones (Mrs. John Steward Jr.), by Paillet;
• Peter’s niece [Léontine] Elizabeth Marié (Mrs. Morgan Gibbes Barnwell), by Carl A. Weidner;
• a future connection of the Stewards’, Margaret Louise “Daisy” Post, who married James Laurens Van Alen in 1900, by Weidner;
• Peter’s niece Sarah Steward “Sallie” Marié, the first wife of Francis Key Pendleton, rendered twice by Paillet; and
• Carolyn Phelps Hoe, the first wife of Peter’s nephew Léon, by Paillet.

One might stretch this list even further, to include Mrs. Barnwell’s son, Clermont Livingston Barnwell, who married his cousin Elizabeth Steward Morris Burrill, bringing in another member of the John Steward family. Elizabeth Steward Morris (Burrill) Barnwell was the daughter of Drayton Burrill and Elizabeth Steward, and the granddaughter of Daniel Jackson Steward and Mary Anna Bogert. D. Jackson Steward (1816-1898) was the brother of Elizabeth (Steward) Slosson, John Steward (my great-great-grandfather), and Mary Young (Steward) Van Alen, and the half-brother of Rachel Young (Steward) Marié, who married Peter’s brother Camille; it was the son of this last marriage, Léon Marié, whose third marriage produced Cousin Camille, who entertained me at lunch one day years ago!

Note

[1] Camille was named for his paternal grandmother’s family, so Steward is correct.