Manufacturer
Centurion, 1919–1958
Born 30 June 1865 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Died 24 February 1958 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Woodlawn Cemetery
, Bronx, New York
Proposed by J. Cleveland Cady and William R. Willcox
Elected 5 April 1919 at age fifty-three
Archivist’s Note: Half-brother of Paul Debevoise and Thomas M. Debevoise; father of George Douglass Debevoise and Robert Debevoise; uncle of Eli Whitney Debevoise; great-uncle of Thomas M. Debevoise. He and Henry M. Brookfield married two sisters.
Century Memorial
It is rare indeed for us to have six members of the same family with us in the Century all at the same time. But until last year there were six Debevoise Centurions: the brothers, George, Thomas, and Paul, George’s sons, George Douglass, and Robert, and Thomas’s son, Eli Whitney. George was the oldest; at the time of his death he was ninety-three [sic: ninety-two]. He had been a member for thirty-nine years.
He was the son of a lieutenant in Hawkins’s Zouaves, an organization in the Union army in the Civil War. The elder Debevoise was wounded in the Battle of Roanoke Island.
George was in the class of 1884 in the College of the City of New York but did not graduate with his class. Instead he went into the paint business as salesman for Devoe, Reynolds, and Company. During the first decade of the new century, he founded the Debevoise Company, of which he was president until 1945. After that, the business was managed by his sons.
Naturally gregarious, George Debevoise had almost countless friends. His social activities—many of them in the church of which he was an active member—were varied and useful. He was exceedingly generous, going out of his way to help friends who were in trouble or in need.
To his brothers and sisters he was known as “the gentle bearded saint.”
Roger Burlingame
1959 Century Association Yearbook
