George Goelet Kip

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Kip was born on January 15, 1845, in New York City. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799–1876) and Elizabeth (née Goelet) Kip (1808–1882). Growing up, Kip lived with his parents, his sister Margaret (who died young), and the family's servants in a house overlooking Washington Square in Manhattan. Both of his parents inherited a substantial amount of property and never worked during their lifetimes.{{cite book|title=More Than Lasting Brass: Thread of Family from Revolutionary New York to Industrial Connecticut|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k6rPg16aexEC&pg=PA175|accessdate=27 February 2018|isbn = 9781555536268|last1 = Judd|first1 = Peter H.|year = 2004}}

On his father's side Kip was a descendant of Jessé de Forest and Hendrick Hendricksen Kip, founder of the Kip family of Kips Bay, Manhattan. During the American Revolution, his great-grandparents Samuel Kip and Anna Herring owned the famous Kips Bay Mansion, the oldest house in Manhattan until it was taken down in 1851. On his mother's side, Kip was a great-grandson of Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant and progenitor of the Goelet family real estate fortune.

Kip attended Columbia University as an undergraduate, graduating in 1865. While at Columbia, Kip served as the President of the Peithologian Society, a student debating society.{{cite book|title=Catalogue of Columbia College|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cjQbAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA42|accessdate=27 February 2018|year = 1864}} He received his LLM from Columbia in 1867.

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Kip was a partner in the law firm DeWitt, Lockman and Kip, based at 88 Nassau Street, for a number of years, along with George Gosman DeWitt and John Thomas Lockman. In 1882 he represented his cousins Robert Goelet and Ogden Goelet (builder of Ochre Court and father of Mary Goelet) before the New York Supreme Court in a legal battle that erupted over control of trusts set up by Peter P. Goelet and Jean B. Goelet for their nephews.{{cite book|title=Supreme Court Papers on A Appeal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t90qU9d5MvIC&pg=RA5-PA84|accessdate=27 February 2018|year = 1885}} Kip's firm was known for its work defending the estates of New York's old Dutch families.{{cite book|title=Famous Families of New York|url=http://files.usgwarchives.net/ny/state/bios/ffny/kip.txt|accessdate=28 February 2018}}

In the 1880s, Kip moved his family and servants to Ruremont, an 11-acre country estate on Madison Avenue in Morristown, New Jersey, a street then known as "Millionaires Row." In 1902, the Town and Country Life magazine wrote that Ruremont, “with its smooth lawns and well-ordered gardens and greenhouses,” was “one of the most attractive places in Morristown.”{{cite news|title=Town & Country Life|work=Town & Country|date=April 19, 1902|id={{ProQuest|126825843}}}}

Kip was a member of the exclusive Holland Society of New York, the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, the University Club of New York and The Metropolitan Club.{{cite book|title=Social Register 1897|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sg0MAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA202|accessdate=3 April 2018|year = 1896}} He also maintained an extensive correspondence with preservationist John Muir, of whom he was a friend and financial supporter.{{cite news|title=Letter From John Muir to George G. Kip|url=https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt1p3034wf/|accessdate=27 February 2018|work=The John Muir Correspondence, University of California at Berkeley|date=January 6, 1902}}

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On May 23, 1867, Kip was married to Anna Margaret Geissenhainer (1847–1893) in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania by the Rev. George W. Schumucker.{{cite news|title=Married {{!}} KIP--GEISSENHAINER|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1867/05/25/80211417.pdf |accessdate=27 February 2018|work=The New York Times|date=May 25, 1867}} Anna was the daughter of the Rev. Augustus T. Geissenhainer and Amelia (née Havemeyer) Geissenhainer. She was also the niece of three-term New York City mayor William Frederick Havemeyer.{{refn|group=lower-alpha|In 1896, Anna's cousins Theodore Havemeyer and Henry Osborne Havemeyer funded the construction of Havemeyer Hall at Columbia University in honor of their father, Frederick Christian Havemeyer.{{cite web|title=Havemeyer Hall|url=https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/havemeyerhall.html|accessdate=27 February 2018}} Another one of Anna's Havemeyer cousins was John Isaiah Northrop, the Columbia University professor who blew himself up in his laboratory at the Columbia School of Mines in 1891 and the father of Nobel Prize Laureate John Howard Northrop.}} Her mother and uncle were children of William Havemeyer, founder of the sugar refining company that would become the Sugar Trust (later Domino Sugar).{{cite news|title=Death of a Well-Known Lutheran Clergyman|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/45558907|accessdate=3 May 2018|work=The Reading Times|date=March 6, 1882}} Through her father, Anna was also a second cousin of the New Jersey congressman Jacob Augustus Geissenhainer.{{cite web|title=Jacob Augustus Geissenhainer|url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000119|accessdate=24 May 2018}} Together, George and Anna were the parents of three children:

• Charles Augustus Kip (1870–1940), married Marie Gilmour Bryce (1878–1940).{{cite news|title=Society Enjoys Autumnal Season in the Country|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/09/21/issue.html|accessdate=19 March 2018|work=The New York Times|date=September 21, 1913}}
• Elbert Samuel Kip (1874–1950), married Alice Alden Bushnell (1872–1952), a granddaughter of the industrialist and oil trader Daniel Bushnell. Alice's nephew, Joseph Bushnell Ames, was a prolific novelist during the early 20th century, and her first cousin, Mary Warden Harkness, was the wife of Charles W. Harkness. Another one of Alice's nephews, Peter Ashmun Ames, a member of the Cairo Gang, was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army in Dublin on Bloody Sunday while working as an agent for the British MI5.{{cite web|title=Why did the IRA assassinate this American?|website=The Daily Beast |date=16 April 2016 |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-did-the-ira-assassinate-this-american|accessdate=27 February 2018|last1=Harding |first1=Stephen }}
• Anna Elizabeth Kip (1880–1918), married A. Paul Olmsted (1882–1948), the son of Charles Sanford Olmsted, the Bishop of Colorado.{{cite book|title=Historical Papers on Shelter Island and its Presbyterian Church|publisher=Published by the author.|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924025959614|page=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924025959614/page/n292 269]|accessdate=27 February 2018|last1 = Mallmann|first1 = Jacob Edward|year = 1899}}

His wife died suddenly of heart failure on April 5, 1893,{{cite news |title=DIED. KIP |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1893/04/06/109697124.pdf |accessdate=27 August 2019 |work=The New York Times |date=6 April 1893}} and in 1898 Kip funded the construction of the Anna Margaret Home for Convalescents, the main building of the new Morristown Memorial Hospital, in her honor.{{cite book|title=Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4x_cAAAAIAAJ&q=anna+margaret+home+for+convalescents&pg=PA411|accessdate=4 September 2019|year = 1916}} Kip died at his home in Morristown on June 27, 1926.{{cite news|title=George G. Kip Dies at 81|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/06/28/104209182.pdf |accessdate=27 February 2018|work=The New York Times|date=June 28, 1926}}

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Category:1845 births

Category:1926 deaths

Category:Goelet family

Category:American lawyers

Category:American socialites

Category:American upper class

Category:Columbia Law School alumni