Mary Seney Sheldon

Mary R. Seney Sheldon (July 3, 1863 – June 16, 1913) was the first female president of the New York Philharmonic. She is credited with reorganizing the orchestra into a modern institution in 1909. One of her major contributions was the hiring of Gustav Mahler.

Sheldon was one of nine children, and was born on July 3, 1863. She was the descendant of men who had been actively involved in the early American republic: Joshua Seney represented Maryland in the Continental Congress and James W. Nicholson was one of the first commodores in the United States Navy. Her grandfather, Robert Seney, was a graduate of Columbia College and a Methodist minister who preached in Astoria (in present-day Queens). His son was the well-known banker, philanthropist, and art collector George Ingraham Seney (1826–92), who was educated at Wesleyan University and New York University. George Seney married Phoebe Augusta Moser, of a prominent Brooklyn family, in 1849.

By the time she was a teenager, the Seney family was living at 4 Montague Terrace in "one of the finest houses in Brooklyn," and her father was the president of the Metropolitan Bank in Manhattan, which was a national institution. Sheldon grew up in a philanthropic family. In 1881, George Seney gave half a million dollars to establish the Methodist Hospital in what is now Park Slope, Brooklyn. That same year, he also gave away eighteen-year-old Mary as the bride of George Rumsey Sheldon, a Harvard graduate who had his own banking firm in New York City.

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