Ward McAllister

Samuel Ward McAllister (December 28, 1827 – January 31, 1895) was a popular arbiter of social taste in the Gilded Age of America, widely accepted as the authority to which families could be classified as the cream of New York society (The Four Hundred). His listings were questioned by those excluded from them, and his motivation of self-aggrandizement was noted.

Early life

He was born Samuel Ward McAllister to a socially prominent Savannah, Georgia, judicial family, his parents Matthew Hall McAllister (1800–1865) and Louisa Charlotte (née Cutler) McAllister (1801–1869).

Through his maternal aunt, Julia Rush Cutler, and her husband, Samuel Ward, McAllister was a first cousin of Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Cutler Ward, the lobbyist whose first wife, Emily Astor, had been the daughter of William Backhouse Astor Sr. and a granddaughter of John Jacob Astor. His maternal grandparents were Benjamin Clark Cutler, Norfolk County Sheriff, and Sarah (née Mitchell) Cutler.

In 1850, McAllister traveled to California with his father during the Gold Rush and became one of the partners in the law firm McAllister & Sons. Before becoming a fixture in New York society, McAllister studied law in Savannah, Georgia, and gained a reputation as a skilled attorney and civic leader within the Southern elite prior to the Civil War.

New York Society

McAllister wrote that after his marriage in 1853, he bought a farm on Narragansett Bay, planted trees and left for a three-year journey throughout Europe's great cities and spas—Bath, Pau, Bad Nauheim, and the like—where he observed the mannerisms of other wealthy Americans and titled nobility, returning to New York with his wife and two small children on October 15, 1858. Using his wife's wealth and his own social connections, he sought to become a tastemaker amongst New York's "Knickerbocracy", a collection of old merchant and landowning families who traced their lineage back to the days of colonial New Amsterdam. Above all in his life was his desire for social recognition by what he termed the Ton, i.e., the cream of society.