Widener III, Peter Arrell Brown

Biography

Peter Arrell Brown Widener III is the fourth generation of a Philadelphia dynasty established by Peter Arrell Brown Widener [1834-1915] and his wife Hannah Josephine Dunton [c. 1836-1896]. The son of a bricklayer, the first Peter A.B. Widener went to public schools in Philadelphia, began his career as a butcher's assistant, and eventually rose to power and fortune in the trolley-car and financial industries. Of his three sons, only Joseph Early Widener [1871/1872-1943] survived his father. Joseph was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard. Although the business of his life was the administration of the Widener estate, he was also active in racing circles, at one point being the largest individual stockholder of Belmont Park and owning stables at his Pennsylvania estate, in Chantilly, France, and in Kentucky. Joseph Widener was married to Ella Pancoast [d. 1929] of Philadelphia and had two children, Peter Arrell Brown II and Josephine (Fifi), later Mrs. Aksel Wichfeld. Peter II was also educated at Harvard and shared his father's passion for thoroughbred racing and breeding. Peter II married Gertrude T. Douglas Peabody and had a son, Peter Arrell Brown Widener III, and a daughter, Ella Anna.

Peter III continued in the family horseman tradition, serving on the board of directors of the Hialeah Race Course in south Florida where his father and grandfather had been presidents, and operating the Widener family horse farm in Kentucky as a young man. Later in life he acquired a cattle ranch in Wyoming and a horse farm in Florida. He was also for a time the sheriff of Palm Beach County in Florida, and was a member of that town's council. Peter III was ultimately married six times. With Louise Brownell van Meter of Lexington, he had two sons, Peter IV and George; Peter III and Louise divorced in 1958. The following year he married Patricia Massie Tavender, with whom he had a son, Joseph, born in 1962. Patricia died in a crash of the family plane in 1963. His 1979 marriage to Daphne Lewis Ashley ended in divorce in 1987. His great-grandfather's estate, Lynnewood Hall, where Peter III grew up, was located in Elkins Park outside Philadelphia and housed an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative art and porcelains, which was ultimately donated to the National Gallery in 1942, through Joseph Widener.

Bibliography

1963

New York Times [western edition]. February 5, 1963 [Patricia Massie Widener obituary]

1973

Livingston, Bernard. Their Turf. America's Horsey Set & Its Princely Dynasties. New York, 1973:124-127

1986

Hunter, Chris. "The Widener Legacy." Palm Beach Life (February 1986):90-95+

Related Content