Charles Gaston de Fontenilliat, Count of Fontenilliat[a] (27 August 1858 – 30 May 1925) was a French nobleman, soldier, and businessman who married two American heiresses.
Early life
Gaston was born on 28 August 1858 at
Épinay-sur-Seine, a
commune in the northern suburbs of Paris. He was a son of Baroness Anne Hélène Amélie Marie von Krüdener (1830–1859) and Arthur Jules Philippe, Count of Fontenilliat (1822–1900).[1] His elder brother, Philippe de Fontenilliat, married Adrienne Espinasse, and his elder sister, Helene de Fontenilliat, married
Constantin Linder, the wealthy
Finnish Lord of
Kytäjä.[2] His father, a Knight of the
Order of the Holy Sepulchre, served as Secretary to the French Legation in Sweden in 1853.[3]
Fontenilliat served as a
Second-Lieutenant in the 12th Chasseurs (also known as the Chasseurs de Champagne). Shortly after their marriage, he was forced to resign because "of a scandal created by a girl named Odette, who accused him of having borrowed money of her. She declared that he owed her $8,000" which his wife had to pay part of.[7]
Rene Gaston de Fontenilliat (1893–1946), who inherited half of the estate of his unmarried maternal aunt, Armide Vogel Smith;[17][18] he married Emma Elesa Tourot in 1923.[19]
After their bitter divorce Julia lived "in a magnificent villa at
Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris" but died at the
Bois-Colombes hospital in Paris on 4 August 1905,[20] and was buried at
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.[21] Fontenilliat was in Russia when she died.[20] He married, secondly, Mary Josephine (néeLivingston) Blanc de Lanautte d'Hauterive (1854–1937) in Paris on 23 July 1913.[22] Mary, a daughter of Mary Josephine (néeKernochan) Livingston of
Eastnor Castle and Edward Louis Livingston (a direct descendant of Judge
Robert Livingston),[23][24] was the widow of Campbell Boyd,[f] and Charles-Joseph Blanc, Vicomte de Lanautte d'Hauterive.[26][g]
He died in Paris in 1925.[28] His widow died on 30 October 1937 in
Monte Carlo.[22]
References
Notes
^He is sometimes referred to as the Baron of Fontenilliat but more often as the Count of Fontenilliat.
^From his grandparents marriage, he had an uncle, Baron Nikolai Arthur von Krüdener. While still married to his grandfather, his grandmother had a child with
Count Nikolay Adlerberg, his uncle Count Nikolai Adlerberg (b. 1848). After his grandfather's death in 1852, his grandmother married
Count Nikolay Adlerberg.[5]
^Campbell Boyd (1842–1894) was the son of John Christian Curwen Boyd and a nephew of
Benjamin Boyd and
Mark Boyd.[25]
^ Mary Josephine's second husband, the Vicomte de Lanautte d'Hauterive, was a son of Auguste Maurice Blanc de Lanautte d'Hauterive (nephew of
Alexandre Maurice Blanc de Lanautte, Comte d'Hauterive), and was previously married to heiress Nora Davis (d. 1874), daughter of
Thomas E. Davis, in 1873.[27]
Sources
^Carpelan, Tor Harald (1903).
Finsk biografisk handbok (in Swedish). G.W. Edlunds förlag. p. 2575. Retrieved 27 July 2022.