Cass Canfield
March 27, 1986 (aged 88)
Harvard University, 1919
Publishing executive
President and chairman of Harper & Brothers
Cass and Michael
Lewis Cass (great grandfather)
Early life[edit]
Canfield was the son of Augustus Cass Canfield (1854–1904), a wealthy engineer and yachtsman, and his wife, the former Josephine Houghteling. His stepfather was Frank Gray Griswold, a relative of American bishop Frank Griswold. He also was a great-grandson of Presidential candidate Lewis Cass. He had two sisters, playwright Mary Cass Canfield and Laura Cass Canfield (Mrs William Lawrence Wood).
He attended the Groton School and Harvard University, graduating from Harvard in 1919 after serving as a lieutenant in the United States Army during World War I. Canfield also studied at New College, Oxford and trekked through Asia, retracing the route of Marco Polo.[1]
Canfield married three times. In 1922, he married his first wife, Katherine Temple Emmet, a descendant of New York State Attorney General Thomas Addis Emmet. Before their divorce in June 1937, they were the parents of two sons:[5]
After their divorce, she married, in October 1937, John D. W. Churchill.[12] According to the memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom believed that Michael Canfield was actually the biological son of his brother Prince George, Duke of Kent and socialite Kiki Preston.
In 1938, Canfield married his second wife, Jane Sage White, an author and sculptor.[13] She was the former wife of Charles Fairchild Fuller and a relative of Ernest Ingersoll. By this marriage Canfield had three stepchildren: Jane Sage Fuller, Blair Fairchild Fuller, and Isabelle Whitney "Jill" Fuller. They remained married until Jane's death in 1984.
In 1984, Canfield married Joan H. King. They remained married until his death in 1986.[1]