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hi i'm connor flanagan the director of education here at the southampton history museum and today my co-worker mary cummings is going to be giving her talk on the kreider triplets uh three women highlighted in our gilded age exhibit um she's been giving this lecture series since march april one of one of those i forget off top my head right now but um once a month diving into all the women highlighted in our exhibit if you have not had a chance to see the exhibit in person yet we are now open so you can just give us a call at 631-283-2494 and you can book a tour um but without further ado i will turn things over to mary and she can get started with her talk enjoy everybody hi everybody um thanks for joining me for this latest installment of my series on the gilded age women this time i have not one but three subjects the famous kreider triplets l edith elsie and ethel duncan kreider a well-heeled tea importer and father of the celebrated crider triplets edith elsie and ethel once acknowledged that his fondest hope for his daughters was that each would marry a man who did not have to go to business every day a man of great charm and wit duncan crider had been raised in london and was comfortable and popular wherever he went the criders were among the earliest members of southampton's resort colony summering in sand drift a shingled cottage built on the dunes in 1885 and now long gone but we'd still have crider lane to remember to remind us of the kreider family there as on the streets of new york city where they spend the rest of the year the three adorable little girls born in 1882 turn heads wherever they go dressed identically and impossible to tell apart impressed on the girls from the start is the importance of their mother elizabeth ogden crider's pedigree among her illustrious ogden ancestors was john ogden who had arrived in southampton with the settlement's second minister in 1649. for nearly two decades ogden held prominent positions in the town's administration while acquiring much real estate including in chinacock hills historians have speculated on his reasons for leaving southampton in 1670 but they don't usually include his family's account which has him selling and departing because he disapproved of the way the indians were being treated there oh shoot he resettled uh in new jersey where he became the leader of elizabethtown and later he became [Music] governor unfortunately the girls early childhood at idle the summers on the shore and winters in the glittering city comes to an abrupt end when they are eight years old in 1891 their uncle william wetmore kreider besmirches the family name by helping himself to thirty nine thousand dollars from the manhattan square bank where he's president and duncan serves on the board william a pillar of the financial community has also been a pillar of support for duncan's family which is dependent on him to supplement the sometimes meager tea business profits making matters worse for everybody william religs on his debts and deserts his wife to escape the family scandal duncan kreider sweeps his family off to paris a move that has some very pleasant consequences for edith elsie and ethel apparently the money never really dies up completely but when it is reduced to a trickle the criders put on a good front in europe the triplets live what elsie later describes as a life of leisure educated by their governess they learn french and invent a secret language they tour europe and guided by their father acquire the continental polish that will attract the kind of men who will never be tied to a desk by the british and continental cities and spas in the off season they save money but establish social ties that will endure they need consuelo vanderbilt who becomes edith's best friend in 1897. and in 1897 they're honored by an invitation to visit the empress eugenie widow of the last emperor of france their crowning achievement elsie always the most audacious is her father's favorite her sisters predict that she will be the most successful in carrying out her father's ambitions for his daughters though by the time it is felt safe to return home all three have acquired impeccably aristocratic manners and social ease they are celebrities pointed out on the street when they pass by on their return in 1899 the triplets take manhattan by storms they settle in at their greenwich village home filling it with souvenirs of their travels at their debut in 1900 they are extravagantly dressed and the stars of the evening though they are awarded faint praise in town topics the widely read social sheikh describes the triplets as pleasant well-mannered but not really pretty girls tall and slightly figure and graceful in movement pretty or not they appear on magazine covers inspire repsodic pros in the society columns and wealthy suitors flock to their door the first to be married and curiously labeled the oldest of the triplets is edith whose groom frederick lothrop ames jr is described as a financier and socialite whose ames ancestors arrived in plymouth massachusetts in 1635. ames is succeed in numerous ways over the years but the enterprise that accounts for frederick's huge fortune is the company founded by his grandfather which ultimately manufactures three-fifths of the shovels in the world frederick's father heir to the shovel fortune is said to be the richest man in massachusetts and edith's husband and heir at 17 after his father's premature death is well schooled in the art of high living and lavish spending by the time he and edith are married the wedding takes place in may 1904 with ethel and elsie as bridesmaids that same year ames commissions architects to design a georgian revival mansion for him and for his bride on his vast country estate near boston stone hill house as they call it is completed in 1905 it's now part of stonehill college in 1916 frederick and edith acquire another mansion one that will put them in position to enter newport society they call their new dwelling on bellevue avenue ames villa and proceed to completely remodel it originally a stix-style cottage known as new lodge it's a mansion in the classical revival style when the transformation is complete five months later it is elsie at the altar and it's another magnificent match unaware of the tenuous position the kreider family has held at times in society and of their financial stresses the society press calls the union a coup for william woodward though he's certainly a catch himself with old money blue blood and a future as president of the hanover national bank the wedding in october 1904 is another triumph for duncan kreider who continues to be described in the press as very wealthy and highly connected then in december 1908 complete victory is his when edith last i mean ethel last of the triplets to marry is courted and won by cecil higgins a wealthy former secretary of the british embassy in washington he sweeps ethel off to england and a life in london society with their access to boston and london respectively edith and ethel move out of the new york spotlight leaving elsie to bathe bass in its glow edith is widowed when frederick ames dies unexpectedly in 1921 at the age of 45. she keeps ames villa in newport but wastes no time in selling stone hill house having little interest in the huge agricultural estate and the guernsey cattle that were her husband's pride stodgy boston society and cows even prize-winning cattle can't compete with the heady pleasures of gilded age newport in 1931 when the widowed edith marries roger cutler whom the press considers quote a good humored playboy close quotes handsome athletic and seven years her junior eyebrows are raised but edith and her new husband spend their summers in ames villa and hold a secure place in newport elite circles the first to be married edith is the first to die in 1954 at the age of 72. ethel's death follows 10 years later she too has remarried in 1921. her second husband arthur fowler is a widower whose first wife had been very wealthy at his death he bequeaths to ethel his first wife's fortune which ethel uses to settle in georgetown becoming a celebrated washington hostess second only to her coast close friend alice roosevelt longworth three who lived to get married was the way one writer viewed the triplets in their days as celebrated young beauties edith and ethel each married twice while elsie has the longest marriage and the longest but far from the happiest life the early years of her marriage are the stuff of dreams headed for a top spot in the city's financial community william woodward senior has another more dashing side after harvard undergraduate and law degrees he serves as secretary to the united states ambassador to britain and hobnobs with king edward ii in his circle including at the racetrack back home he inherits the historic bel air mansion and bel air stud the thoroughbred horse racing stable and breeding farm in maryland that would produce some of the greatest thoroughbred race horses in the u.s under his direction during his courtship of elsie there had been visits to the saratoga racecourse and after their marriage the young woodwards are favorites in the racing community as well as in new york city society where they entertained lavishly at nine east 86th street alas scandal seems to stalk elsie earlier the crider family disgrace in 1891 had actually had rather pleasant consequences for the triplets sending them off to paris the woodward scandals will be much more damaging elsie's only son william known as billy woodward jr seems at first to be destined for a charmed life educated at buckley croton and harvard billy has everything going for him as a young man he's listed as one of america's most eligible bachelors [Music] ann crowl a kansas-born radio actress who's determined to crash new york's high society comes along and precipitates a series of scandals that will torment elsie for years to come a beautiful and shameless driver and sets her sights first on william senior who perhaps inevitably has abandoned any pretext of living the life of a sober-sided banker high living among the high-stakes thoroughbred racing crowd is more to his taste and he is rumored to have taken anne on as the mistress and then passed her down to his son elsie presumably has the high tolerance for her husband's dalliances that the gilded age requires of wives but her son is another matter dead set against a marriage she goes so far as to hire a detective to follow anne and is horrified to learn of anne's trail of lovers but on march 11 1943 billy and ann are married in a quiet wedding in tacoma washington where he stationed in the navy a devastated elsie does not attend the ceremony the marriage is volatile marked by frequent fights and numerous affairs without the navy to bring order to his life and despite his marriage billy assumes his former playboy habits elsie is desperate to interest him in something other than parties and chasing women but again she fails and holds her own in the marital battles and holds on planning trips and treats for billy and giving birth to two sons despite their fraud alliance the younger woodwards remain fixtures in upper class society in 1955 anne and billy are still together living in oyster bay where there is talk of a prowler in their neighborhood before leaving for a nearby party at which the duchess of windsor is to be the honored guests they make a search of the property around the house with flashlights but find nothing out of order at the party billy dances with the duchess and anne watches closely as he taps other partners back home they retired to their separate rooms then around 2 am there is the sound of gunshot and billy lies dead anne has shot him with the shotgun she keeps by her bed and claims to have mistaken her husband for the prowler for a public with an insatiable appetite for every detail of the murder this illustration offers visual clarification elsie allows ann to order the flowers for the casket but forbids her to attend the funeral anne chooses a blanket of white chrysanthemums and red carnations the color scheme of billy's racing stable some are quick to call it murder others hasten to protect the woodward name elsie does both by all accounts she's convinced that it was murder committed by the daughter-in-law whom she has never accepted as a worthy match for a woodward and whom she dislikes intensely on the other hand the woodward name must be protected from scandal in the end elsie backs and publicly in the hope that the press will then refrain from digging up dirt on billy's philandering when a grand jury is convened it absolves anne of murder without quieting doubts elsie's hand in the favorable outcome for anne is rumored to have been heavy costing her some four hundred thousand dollars anna's free but her social friends take a cue from elsie and shut her out charming billy is dead and anne is banished from society elsie outlives her son by many years soldiering on as a stove award socialite but her trials are seemingly endless in 1975 when an excerpt of truman capote's book answered prayers appears in esquire magazine reviving the 20 year old tale of billy's tragic death and repeating society's judgment that his wife was the likely murderer and is driven to suicide she takes her own life with a capsule of cyanide one more scandal for elsie to face down and not the last before long both her grandsons annes and billy's sons will jump out of windows to their deaths facing her own death at 99 1981 elsie remains unbent telling a friend i'm just going down like a ship all my sales are up but i'm just thinking so with the end of the third triplet that's the end of my tale my next uh talk on thursday october 29th will be on helen parrish brown adored daughter of the very very merry and very rich james parish and favorite niece of southampton's childless benefactor samuel parish i hope you'll join me then thanks mary for today's talk um if anybody has any questions um now would be the time where you can ask them um you'll see hopefully on the bottom of your toolbar there should be a q a button and also a button called uh this is chat um you can submit your questions in either one of those if you have any for mary about any of the three sisters or any of their strange and tragic lives um and i will ask mary then let's see so uh before i go go to the questions i do just want to say um it was always funny last year before before code and we shut down all that whenever i had kids come to the museum for a tour because i would i'd usually be the one bringing them through and giving them the tour of the house and this exhibit was up for a little while and normally i bring the kids through our whole main exhibit and tell them all about everything that's in there then this one i usually skipped over a few of the different uh a few of the different stories whenever i had younger school children this being one of them um but but let's see questions um all right so we have one from uh kim where are the sisters buried um i think they're very uh i i i can't i don't know i'm i'm not sure i think they're buried with their husbands but they're they're not here i don't think there's no cried or tomb or anything like that and no you can go to crider lane and uh remember them okay which leads to the beach well that's good um let's see did the two other sisters support elise during her trials um let me see the trial was i i think at least one of them was dead i don't know if they were supportive or not but um i think they probably went along with elsie supported her because of the protecting the name but suspicious yeah um nobody liked her in the family um also was the relationship with wallace simpson accepted or looked down upon society at the time well they were invited you know and [Music] it didn't seem to affect um anybody who i mean the duchess was invited everywhere and she was often with him um and then was the book the two mrs greenvilles by dunn uh based on the woodward's yes yes okay yes absolutely um let's see and does anybody else have any other questions yes it was a book and a movie oh and a movie yeah when was the movie made a while ago or uh yeah some time ago uh but it's probably available maybe it could be somewhere future uh screening that we do or maybe put it on our block all right but if nobody else has any other questions um we could wrap it up for today this was a another great talk mary um any of you watching now if you want to share this with anybody we'll have it on youtube within the next week or so so you can pass it around and hopefully you'll be able to join us next month for the next talk which mayor you already mentioned right yes right on helen parish brown yep and that's going to be on october 29th same place same time and we'll see you all then thanks everybody