Josiah W. Macy, Jr.

Captain Josiah W. Macy Jr. (1838?–1876) was an American sea captain and philanthropist.

He was born into a philanthropic family. The elder Josiah Macy established a shipping and commission firm in New York City, after leaving the family home in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where his family had settled during the early 17th century. Josiah Macy's sons and grandsons earned their money from an oil company that was later incorporated into the Standard Oil Company under the Rockefeller family. A grandson was Josiah, junior, a prominent philanthropist, who died in 1876 of typhoid fever.

The son of Josiah, junior, V. Everit Macy, was a prominent statesman in Westchester County, New York, and a benefactor of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Catherine "Kate" Everit Macy (1863–1945), the daughter of Josiah Macy, junior, married Walter Graeme Ladd, a lawyer and yachtsman who won several yachting prizes, including some with his schooner, the Etak ("Kate" spelled backwards). She continued the Macy family's philanthropic habits throughout her entire life, and by the time of Kate Macy Ladd's death in 1945, the Josiah Macy Foundation had received about $19 million from her and her estate.

The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation was endowed in the name of Captain Josiah W. Macy Jr. by his daughter (Catherine "Kate" Everit Macy) in 1930. Time Magazine in 1930 reported that the Foundation created a fellowship fund for the expenses of Albert Einstein's assistant. "First incumbent will be Dr. Einstein's good friend and familiar, Dr. Walter Mayer, mathematician at the University of Vienna."

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