Researching Civil War Photo: Gloria Vanderbilt’s Great Grandfather

Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes about researching a Civil War photo of one of Gloria Vanderbilt’s ancestors. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

Heritage Collectors’ Society asked me to research a few photographs recently. Among the collection was this photo of Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (1836-1881).

I started my hunt using GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives, and found a nice write up on his military career in the San Francisco Call Bulletin.

From this and other articles, I learned that Hugh Kilpatrick was a Union cavalry officer during the Civil War, earned the nickname “Kill-Cavalry,” and achieved the rank of brevet brigadier general. He was born in Deckertown, New Jersey, and graduated from West Point (1861). He served in the Gettysburg campaign and on Sherman’s march to the sea.

In 1864 Kilpatrick led a calvary expedition of 5,000 men around Robert E. Lee’s army near Richmond, Virginia, attempting to relieve union prisoners at Libby prison. The expedition failed in its main objective, but “inflicted considerable loss on the Confederates by destroying their railroads and bridges and cutting up several of their regiments.”

Continuing my research, I found this article in the Augusta Chronicle which referenced General Kilpatrick’s sister. Her name was Adeline “Phebe” Kilpatrick, who married Abiah Wilson in Deckertown, New Jersey.

The couple purchased (about 1870) a plantation called “Innisfail” in Morgan County, Georgia, once the summer residence of Robert Taylor, a Confederate general in the Georgia State Militia. Kilpatrick’s nephews Dr. A. O. Wilson and Walter Wilson stayed on the property when their father returned to New Jersey.

Walter told reporters a war tidbit about his uncle:

“General Kilpatrick was a self-made man, and graduated at West Point when Gen. Pierce M. B. Young was a cadet. …during a certain battle [Battle of Big Bethel, 10 June 1861] in the Civil War, a Confederate officer who had been in his class at West Point recognized the general across the lines and pointed him out to a sharpshooter, who sent a bullet though his knee wounding him for life.”

The House of the Ferret antique shop in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, has a sampler made by Adeline “Phebe” when she was 14 years old. The sampler contains the verse:

And must this body die
This mortal frame decay
And must these active limbs of mine
Lie moldering in the clay

After the Civil War, Hugh Kilpatrick served as U.S. Minister to Chile and married a wealthy Chilean woman, Luisa Fernandez de Valdivieso.

They had two daughters: Julia Mercedes Kilpatrick (who married U.S. Army Brigadier General William Carroll Rafferty); and Laura Isabel Delphine Kilpatrick (who married Harry Hays Morgan).

Laura and Harry Morgan had twin daughters: Thelma (who married Marmaduke Furness and became Viscountess Furness); and Gloria (who married Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt).

Gloria and Reginald Vanderbilt had a daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, who became a famous artist and socialite.

When Kilpatrick’s great granddaughter Gloria Vanderbilt made her debut as a fashion designer, she told the Dallas Morning News, “I wanted to make something of myself… Maybe the drive is in my genes,” which derived from both sides of her potent pedigree. Gloria’s four marriages are catalogued in this article, which she claims no fame to, but her “workhorse” ethic is in her blood.

Well, Gloria is a tight fit to her forbearer great grandfather Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, who distinguished himself as a battle lord and a Chilean minister. Perhaps she inherited her fondness of home fashion and needlecraft from her great Aunt Phebe.

Gloria, dubbed “the Renaissance Woman” in the creative field, proved to supersede all her ancestor’s fame with her Murjani fashion enterprise. No one can accuse Gloria of riding anyone’s coattails as she asserted: “My track record stands for itself.”

Other famous kin in Gloria’s line include Anderson Cooper, Julia Ward Howe, Robert Trent Paine, and J. P. Morgan.

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Further Reading:

• “Balancing Roles: The Interpretation of Taylor-Grady House.” Thesis: Catherine Ann Rushing, 2009.
• Anderson Cooper – PBS Dr. Gates Show Finding Your Roots Season 2, Episode 3: Our American Storytellers
• Famous Kin.Com

Genealogy:

• Colonel Simon Kilpatrick (1794-1860) and Julia Wickham (1799-1876), daughter of William Wickham (177-1852) and Phebe Rose Meeker (1781-1856). Children: Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (1836-1881), married Luisa Fernandez de Valdivieso (1847-1926); William Wickham Kilpatrick (1826-1855), married Berta Quick; Charity M. Kilpatrick (1825-1868), married John B. Decker (1803-1886); Phebe Adaline Kilpatrick (1821-1901), married Abiah Wilson (1814-1882), son of Abiah Wilson and Mary Lobden.
• Children of Hugh Judson and Louisa Kilpatrick: Julia Mercedes Kilpatrick (1867-1958), married William Carroll Rafferty (1859-1941); Laura Isabel Delphine Kilpatrick (1869-1956), married Harry Hays Morgan (1860-1933). Child: Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan (1904-1965), married Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925). Child: Gloria Vanderbilt (1924-2019).
• Child from Hugh Judson Kilpatrick’s first marriage to Alice Shailer (1841-1863): son Judson Beaumont Kilpatrick (1862-1864).