Buchanan Winthrop

Buchanan Winthrop was a worthy representative of a distinguished family long identified with the City of New York.

He was the only son of Henry R. Winthrop, also a member of The Century, and a direct descendant of John S. Winthrop, Colonial governor of Connecticut. His mother, whose maiden name was Hicks, was a daughter of a former mayor of New York, and a descendant of the Buchanans who owned a large tract of land in the city from which the wealth of the Goelets, the Gerrys and that of his own family was acquired. He graduated at Yale in the class of 1862 with high honors, and from the Columbia College Law School in 1864. His ample fortune made it unnecessary for him to engage in the active practice of his profession, and such time as he gave to business was employed in the care of his own property and that of his relatives. He held many positions of trust and responsibility, which came to him unsought. He was a member of the Corporation of Yale University, where he rendered most intelligent, faithful and valuable services, a Director of the New York Life Insurance and Trust Co., Clerk of the vestry of Grace Church, and also of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, and served at various times in Boards of Government in many clubs and charitable organizations. He was one of the founders of the University Club, of New York, in the early sixties, and, when it was dissolved, was one of the few who preserved its charter by regular meetings in the form of a dining club, and this charter is now the foundation of the present University Club. He was a man of great intellectual power, of broad culture, refined tastes, of scholarly habit, a constant student and reader, with a memory that retained all he had read. His keen sense of humor, lively disposition, abounding geniality, high character and unswerving loyalty drew to him a host of friends who saw in him a man who stood for all that was pure and of good report, and who deserved in the highest degree the love and esteem in which he was held.

Henry E. Howland
1901 Century Association Yearbook