Payne Whitney (Payson) Middleton (1927-2023)

She was born in New York City where her mother (a well-known art collector) was President of the New York Mets baseball team. Her grandfather, Payne Whitney, died as one of the richest men in the country and she was a grand-niece of Pauline (Whitney) Paget and a great-granddaughter of William C. Whitney, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy who built the magnificent Whitney Mansion on Fifth Avenue. She grew up between Manhattan, Long Island and Maine. After her marriage to Henry Bentivoglio Middleton (a trustee of the Middleton family's famous plantation near Charleston, Middleton Place) she lived in Arizona, Greve-in-Chianti (Italy), and Georgetown, S.C. They were the parents of two daughters, Julia Serena di Lapigio and Mrs Frank Graf Oswald III.