Huntington, Archer Milton

Biography

Archer Huntington, born March 10, 1870, was the son of his mother Arabella's first husband, John A. Worsham, a banker in New York in the late 1860s. Worsham apparently died shortly after the marriage, and Archer was adopted by his mother's second husband, Collis P. Huntington, not long after their marriage in July 1884. He was educated privately in New York and Spain, before studying at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Madrid. He married twice, first on August 6, 1895 in London to Helen Manchester Gates. The marriage ended in divorce, and he married again on March 10, 1923 to Anna Vaughan (or Vaughn) Hyatt. A wealthy philanthropist, he was founder and president of The Hispanic Society of America, providing the land and paying for the erection of all the buildings. He was a president of the American Geographical Society, and honorary president of the American Numismatic Society. A trustee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he was also a founder of The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and of the Brookgreen Gardens, an open-air museum of sculpture near Georgetown, South Carolina. He gave the National Academy of Design two residences to form the academy's headquarters in 1940, and his New York City residence was bequeathed to provide additional space. In 1943 he presented 500 acres and a residence to the New York-New Jersey Palisades Park Commission, and he made plans before his death to give his 700 acre farm in Bethel to the state of Connecticut. He wrote several books on Spain, and published many volumes of poems, beginning in 1928 and continuing the rest of his life. His mother bequeathed much of her original art collection to him, which he in turn presented to a number of museums in the United States.

Bibliography

1954

Who's Who in America. Chicago, 1954: 1314.

1955

Obituary, New York Times, December 12, 1955, 31:5.

1956

Who's Who. London, 1956.

1969

Wark, Robert R. "Arabella Huntington and the Beginnings of the Art Collection." In The Founding of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Four Essays. San Marino, California, 1969: 309-331.

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