century association biographical archive

Earliest Members of the Century Association

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Frederick Sturges

Philanthropist/Art Collector

Centurion, 1857–1917

Born 1 June 1833 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Died 22 December 1917 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Fairfield East Cemetery, Fairfield, Connecticut

Proposed by Samuel A. Strang

Elected 7 June 1857 at age twenty-four

Archivist’s Note: Son of Jonathan Sturges; nephew of John L. Cady; brother-in-law of J. Pierpont Morgan; father of Frederick Sturges Jr.

Century Memorial

Frederick Sturges was the senior member of The Century, into which he was received in 1857 at the age of twenty-five [sic: twenty-four]. His death terminated a membership of sixty years, the longest in our records. His father was Jonathan Sturges, a member of the original Sketch Club and a Founder of our Association. New York has had nothing better to offer than the home in which Frederick Sturges was born—a home of family affection and genial hospitality, a home of inherited breeding and quiet manners, a home pervaded with a certain dignity of rectitude. Frederick Sturges maintained these traditions in his own household after his marriage with Miss Mary Reed Fuller, even as in affairs he carried out the pattern set him by his father. From youth to age a man of courtesy and gentle manners, a man of kindness and benevolence, he was likewise constant in the work of our best religious and charitable institutions, the Presbyterian Hospital for example, the American Bible Society, the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled. With his death a fine tone of old New York has passed to silence.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1918 Century Association Yearbook