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Laurance’s mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, served on the board of directors of the YWCA, where she met Mary French’s mother. Mary French was the granddaughter of Frederick and Julia Billings, intertwining their family histories. Over the years, the families continued to cultivate connections. Notably, Nelson R. Rockefeller attended ...
Apr 17, 1997 · Mary Billings French was born on May 1, 1910 to John French and Mary Montagu Billings French, daughter of Frederick Billings. In 1954, she assumed ownership of the Billings estate in Woodstock, Vermont, including the family mansion and 80 acres of surrounding grounds. Mary and Laurance Rockefeller were married in 1934, and together had four ...
- John D. Rockefeller Reshapes The World
- Father and Son
- Making A Home in The Hudson Valley
- Passing Private Estates to The Public
- Palisades Interstate Park: Preservation Close to Home
- Acadia: The First National Park on The East Coast
- The Rockefellers in Acadia
- Expanding The Function of Parks in The West
- Saving The Redwoods
- Interpreting Mesa Verde
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839, twenty-five years before Lincoln granted Yosemite to California. When California acquired Yosemite in 1864, the young Rockefellerhad just entered the emerging oil business. By the time Yosemite became a national park in 1890, he was on the cusp of retirement from the Standard Oil Company, the unprecedented corp...
Together, the two Rockefellers marked out carriage trails, designed dams to create ponds and lakes, built stone bridges, and planted trees. They thoroughly enjoyed cultivating and manipulating the landscape around them. This urge to enhance the beauty of the natural environment through careful staging would remain with the younger Rockefeller all h...
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s younger brother, William, was his business partner in Standard Oil. William Rockefeller became the first member of the family to acquire property in New York’s Hudson River Valley when he purchased Rockwood Hall in 1886. He transformed the estate into one of the nation’s grandest houses (204 rooms) and most beautiful land...
In 1976, Kykuit was designated a National Historic Landmark. Former New York Governor and US Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, the home’s last occupant, surprised the rest of the family when they discovered upon his death in 1979 that he had bequeathed his one-third interest in the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Thus be...
Near the Rockefeller family homes, just across the Hudson River on the outskirts of New York City, the Palisadescliffs have been celebrated by famous writers and depicted by painters. Stretching thirty miles along the west bank of the lower Hudson River, the Palisades had been quarried for decades to meet New York City’s demand for cobblestones and...
Cadillac Mountainlooms as the tallest of the eighteen mountains on Mount Desert Island, Maine. In fact, it is the highest peak on the Atlantic coastline. European mariners were drawn to the bays and harbors of the island as early as the 1500s. Tourists began to flock to the island in the 1870s and by the turn of the twentieth century, some of the m...
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his family acquired a summer residence at Seal Harborin 1910, a 65-room “cottage” that had been built for a Williams College professor. They added to it, eventually bringing its size to 100 rooms, and used it summer after summer. The family was involved in the park from its earliest stages of planning. JDR, Jr. gave 2,7...
The Rockefeller conservation story extends well beyond the Hudson Valley or even the East Coast. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s interest in the western United Statessparked a similar passion in his sons, and it began with family trips filled with camping and horseback riding. On a trip in 1924, JDR, Jr. took his three oldest sons, John 3rd, Nelson, and...
By 1923, one third of the great redwoods of the California coastal region had been logged, and all but 5,000 of the remaining acres were owned by logging companies. With the US Forest Service predicting total extinction within 100 years, the newly-formed Save the Redwoods League reached out to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for help. Before he could comp...
At Mesa Verde, JDR, Jr. began to realize the impact of education and interpretation on visitors’ understanding and enjoyment of the park. Touring the site with Park Service archaeologist Jesse Nusbaum, he asked how he might help with the interpretative aspects of Mesa Verde — always preferring to call it interpretation rather than education. He soo...
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Frederick Billings’ granddaughter, Mary French, grew up spending summers on the estate. In 1934 she married Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, one of the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Together they cherished the Woodstock estate, and sustained it through the twentieth century.
Mary Billings French Rockefeller (May 1, 1910 – April 17, 1997) was an American heiress, socialite, philanthropist, and a member of the extensive Rockefeller family. She was married to Laurance Rockefeller , son of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller .
Dec 23, 2020 · The property was given to the American people by its most recent owners, Laurance S. and Mary French Rockefeller. The park continues the tradition of active forest management in stewarding this nationally significant landscape in partnership with state and nonprofit organizations, schools and youth groups, forest professionals of a variety of disciplines and trades, and the visiting public.
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Apr 10, 2023 · Julia Billings and her daughters, Mary, Elizabeth, and Laura . Billings Family Archives. As Mary French Rockefeller began conversations with her husband Laurance about donating her family home to the National Park Service in the 1990s, initially she wanted to highlight the contributions of the women in her family to the legacy of their estate.
