Theodore Havemeyer

Theodore Havemeyer (1839–1897) was an American businessman who was the first president of the U.S. Golf Association and co-founder of the Newport Country Club, host to both the first U.S. Amateur and the first U.S. Open in 1895.

Havemeyer was born in 1839 to Frederick Christian Havemeyer. Theodore's grandfather, a German immigrant, came to the United States in 1802 and started a sugar refining company with his brother and Theodore's father started his own firm, Havemeyer & Elder. Theodore became an apprentice in his father's firm and later was made a partner working with his brother Henry Osborne Havemeyer. After traveling to Germany and England, in search of new advances in the sugar refining trade, Theodore constructed "one of the most modern sugar refineries in the world."

Theodore Havemeyer was also the Austrian Consul-General in New York City for twenty-five years, up until 1895. He became president of the New York Golf Club and the first president United States Golf Association, as well. Havemeyer co-founded the Newport Country Club, U.S. Amateur Championship and U.S. Open. The U.S. Amateur trophy, the Havemeyer Cup, is currently named in his honor.

Havemeyer married Emily DeLoosey in 1862. They had nine children, five daughters and four sons. The family owned many estates including, a town house on Madison Avenue in New York City, a mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, and 500 acres in Mahwah, New Jersey, called Mountain Side Farm. 300 acres of the Mahwah estate is currently the campus of Ramapo College of New Jersey. The house that Havemeyer and his family lived in is now the home to the college's President and the house that Havemeyer had built for his daughter Lillie, as part of the estate, currently stands as the Administration Building for the college.

His portrait was painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury, one is now in the New York State Museum at Albany; Müller-Ury also painted in 1891 a huge portrait of his wife Emilie de Loosey Havemeyer (Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island (at Rosecliff).

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