Cynthia Burke Cary (née Roche, previously Burden; 10 April 1884 – 18 December 1966) was a British-American socialite and art collector from Newport, Rhode Island.
In 1904, Good Housekeeping magazine described her as among the members of New York's Four Hundred (see The Four Hundred (1892)) who were daring and skilful automobilists.[2] Roche was also recognised as a skilled tennis player and horserider.[3]
On 11 June 1906, Roche married Arthur Scott Burden. Burden was the grandson of industrialist Henry Burden and President of the family business Burden Iron Works.[5] His career, however, was significantly impaired after two horse falls, the second of which seriously aggravated the injuries incurred from the first.[6] As a result of these injuries, Burden was placed under constant care from late 1913, and James A. Burden Jr., Arthur Burden's brother, filed a petition in Cynthia Roche's absence, (as both she and her daughter were in London at the time), requesting that Arthur Burden be declared incompetent.[3] Burden died from pneumonia in June 1921.[6]
The couple had a daughter:
Eileen Burden (1910–1970),[6][7] who married investment banker Walter Maynard (d. 1971), a son of Walter E. Maynard, and had three children.[8][9] They later divorced and in 1963,[10] she married Thomas Robins.[11] Robins was the son of Thomas Robins, inventor of the conveyor belt.[12]
In 1922, after her first husband's death, Roche married Guy Fairfax Cary Sr. (1879–1950) and they honeymooned at the fishing lodge of Robert Walton Goelet.[13] Cary, a lawyer who was a partner with Shearman & Sterling, was the son of Clarence Cary and Elisabeth Miller Potter.[14] His father and aunt, Constance Cary (1843–1920), were the children of Archibald Cary and Monimia Fairfax.[15][16] Together, they had two children:
Guy Fairfax Cary Jr. (1923–2004), who died unmarried.[8]
Cynthia Cary (1924–2019), who married Charles Bingham Penrose Van Pelt (1922–2003) and had three children.[8] She later married Edwin F. Russell (1914–2001), who had four children.[17]
Cynthia died at her home in Newport, aged 82, on 18 December 1966.[18][19] She left an estate valued at $300,000. Her home and the residue of her estate were received by her son, Guy Fairfax Cary Jr.[20]
Descendants
Through her eldest daughter, she was the grandmother of Sheila Maynard, a clinical social worker who worked in Islamabad,[21] married Nicholas Platt,[9] a career diplomat who served as US ambassador to Pakistan, Zambia and the Philippines,[22] and had 3 sons: Adam Platt, a New York magazine restaurant critic, Oliver Platt (b. 1960), the actor, and Nicholas Platt Jr. Also through her eldest daughter, she was the grandmother to Walter Maynard Jr., an investment advisor with Morgan Stanley who married Pamela S. Silver in 1954 and has issue,[23] and John Maynard.[24]
^"Cynthia Cary Collection". Redwood Library & Athenæum. Archived from the original on 27 August 2009. Retrieved 12 September 2009. In 1981, the Redwood Library received the Cynthia Cary Collection from Guy Fairfax Cary Jr., in memory of his mother. Collected over decades by Mr. and Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary Sr., devoted benefactors of Redwood who were passionately interested in 18th century English decorative arts, the Cary Collection contains nearly 200 English and related continental pattern books of furniture, decoration, and ornament from the late 15th century to the mid-19th century.
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