Heber R. Bishop (1840-1902)

He was born in Medford, Massachusetts. After leaving trade school in Boston, at the age of nineteen he went into the sugar business at Remedios in Cuba. Two years later (1861), he founded Bishop & Co., sugar refiners and exporters, and for the next decade made his home at Remedios where he owned several plantations. After the Cuban Revolution of 1873 he sold his business for considerably less than its previous value but nonetheless returned to the States with a considerable fortune that he invested in gas, iron and railroads. He lived at 881 Fifth Avenue in New York City and from 1872 extended "Castle Cunningham" started by his father-in-law at Irvington-on-Hudson. It had a frontage of 175-feet but was burned in 1878 with 25 of Bishop's 80 valuable paintings. He died worth $3.5 million and left his famous collection of oriental jade (even then valued at $1-million) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had 8-children.