J. Griswold Webb

Webb was born on August 13, 1890 at Riverdale in the Bronx.[2] He was the son of railroad executive H. Walter Webb (1856–1900) and Amelia (née Griswold) Webb (1856-1910). In 1904, Leila Webb, now a widow, married Ogden Codman, Jr., the noted society architect and interior decorator best known for his novel written with Edith Wharton.[3]

His paternal grandfather was U.S. Minister to Brazil James Watson Webb and his maternal grandfather was U.S. Congressman John Augustus Griswold. Among his uncles was Civil War general Alexander S. Webb and railroad executive Dr. William Seward Webb, who married Eliza Vanderbilt, the daughter of William K. Vanderbilt.[2]

Webb was a graduate of the Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts, and Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1913.[4] In 1912, he went with a fellow Harvard student by car from New York City to Vancouver, a then unprecedented adventure.[5]

In 1912, Webb was a war correspondent for the Boston Herald in Mexico.[4] From 1914 to 1915, he studied at the Cornell University College of Agriculture. Beginning in 1915, he was the owner and General Manager of "Webb Farms" in Clinton Corners, New York.[4]

On May 16, 1914, he married Anne Pendleton Rogers (1894–1983),[6] the daughter of Archibald Rogers. Together, they were the parents of two children:[1]

• John Griswold Webb Jr. (b. 1916), who attended the Groton School.[1]
• Amelia Griswold "Leila" Webb (b. 1920).[1]

Webb was a member of the Harvard Club of New York, the Racquet and Tennis Club, and the Knickerbocker Club in New York City as well as the Automobile Club of America.[4]

He died on May 5, 1934, at Crumwold Hall, his estate designed by Richard Morris Hunt in Hyde Park, New York, after a long illness.[1]