Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt
| Frank Armstrong Crawford-Vanderbilt | |
|---|---|
Portrait by William J. Whittemore
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| Born |
Frank Armstrong Crawford January 18, 1839 Mobile, Alabama |
| Died | May 4, 1885 (aged 46) New York City |
| Occupation | Philanthropist |
| Spouse(s) | Cornelius Vanderbilt (m. 1869; his death 1877) |
Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (January 18, 1839 – May 4, 1885) was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was also the widow of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Frank Armstrong Crawford was born on January 18, 1839 in Mobile, Alabama to Robert Leighton Crawford (1799—1853) and Martha Eliza Everett (1820—1898). Her parents named her after their best friend, Frank Crawford Armstrong, before she was born, not knowing she would be a girl. Growing up in Mobile, she attended St. Francis Street Methodist Church. After the American Civil War of 1861-1865, she moved to New York City with her mother, even though she supported the Confederate States of America.Augusta Jane Evans (1835-1909) described her as a "zealous Methodist."
She persuaded her husband, Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794—1877), to give $1 million to Bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824—1889), the husband of her cousin, Amelia Townsend (1827—1891), to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Cornelius saw this gift as an olive branch to the South, after he had helped defeat the Confederate States Army with his USS Vanderbilt during the Civil War. However, he never visited the university.
She was briefly married to John Elliott, but quickly divorced. In 1869, she married Cornelius Vanderbilt after the death of his first wife, Sophia Johnson (1795—1868) (a mutual cousin). He was her mother's cousin. She signed a pre-nuptial agreement, agreeing to receive $500,000 in bonds after his death, a great sum at the time but a fraction of Vanderbilt's fortune.Braxton Bragg (1817—1876) was at the wedding.
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