Meredith Howland (1833-1912)

He was born at New York. His sister, Rebecca, was married to James Roosevelt, making him an uncle to the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During the Civil War, he was Lieutenant and Paymaster under Colonel Marshall Lefferts to the 7th New York Regiment. In 1870, he married Adelaide Torrance, a grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. In the same year as his marriage, he invested $100,000 into the family's commercial shipping firm, Howland & Aspinwall, becoming a senior partner. The Howlands were among Mrs Astor's "400" but on retiring in the early 1900s, they removed to France where they lived between their home in Paris (104 Avenue des Champs-Elysées) and their villa in Cannes, Villa Dubosc. They died without children.