Sarah Diodati Gardiner (1862-1953)

She was born at Castleton (see images) on Staten Island and was privately educated in the States and in Geneva, Switzerland, before graduating from the Yale School of Fine Arts. For a period, she was a miniature portrait painter, travelling between New York and Paris. In 1937, she became the 15th Proprietor of Gardiner's Island, having bought it after the death of her elder brother, David, in order to keep it in the Gardiner family - she was descended from the Gardiners on both sides of her family.

Having originally lived at Sagtiikos Manor (originally home to her maternal ancestor, Judge Isaac Thompson) she moved into her father's family home in East Hampton and rebuilt the White House, the longtime home of Jonathan Thompson Gardiner, where she spent five months of every year before returning to New York City in November. After a fire destroyed the original manor house on Gardiner's Island in 1947, in the same year she built the new manor house in the Neo-Georgian style on a hilltop overlooking Gardiner's Bay. In 1952, she placed a marker on the site of the old house manor and in 1953 she placed the island on a long-term lease to Marion C. Gale. She died that same year and having never married, her nephew, Robert, then became the 16th Proprietor.