D. LeRoy Dresser | |
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Portrait of Dresser, by Fredricks, ca. 1904
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Born |
Daniel LeRoy Dresser December 13, 1862 Newport, Rhode Island |
Died | July 10, 1915 Providence, Rhode Island |
(aged 52)
Cause of death | Suicide |
Alma mater | Columbia College (1889) |
Spouse(s) |
Emma L. Burnham (m. 1889; div. 1908) Marcia Walther Baldwin (m. 1914; his death 1915) |
Children | 2 |
Parent(s) | George Dresser Susan Fish LeRoy |
Relatives |
Edith S. Dresser (sister) John N. Brown (brother-in-law) George Vanderbilt (brother-in-law) |
Daniel LeRoy Dresser (December 13, 1862 – July 10, 1915) was a shipbuilder who took his own life on July 10, 1915.
Daniel was born in 1862 to Brevet Major George Warren Dresser and Elizabeth Stuyvesant LeRoy. His maternal grandparents were Susan Elizabeth (née Fish) LeRoy (1808–1892) (the daughter of Nicholas Fish and Elizabeth Stuyvesant) and Daniel LeRoy (1799–1885).
His sisters included Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, who married George Washington Vanderbilt II and Natalie Bayard Dresser Brown, who married John Nicholas Brown I. Two other sisters married Mr. George D. Merrill of Stockbridge, Massachusetts and Viscount Romain D'Osmoy of Paris respectively.
He was a graduate of Columbia College in 1889 and a member of the New York Yacht Club and the Seawanhawka-Corinthian Yacht Club.
He was president of the Trust Company of the Republic which failed in 1903 due to the financial failure of United States Shipbuilding Company. He was also president of the Merchants Association and of the silk commission house of Dresser & Co.
In 1908, he was the leader of the Progressive Party in Rhode Island.
Near the end of his life he had patented a steam generator but was unable to attract investors to bring it to market.
In November 1889, he married Emma Louise Burnham (b. 1870) at St. Luke's Church in Matteawan, near Newburgh, New York. She was the daughter of Douglass Williams Burnham (1843–1893) and Hannah Elizabeth Blodgett (b. 1845). Together, they had two children:
Emma divorced Dresser in 1908, citing Mr. Dresser's mental instability, since the failure of the Trust Company of the Republic in 1903.
On December 22, 1914, he married for the second time to Mrs. Marcia Walther Baldwin, an actress and pianist.