gs out some significant facts:

"William C. Schermerhorn, whose death is announced in New York, and who
was a cousin of Mrs. William Astor, was one of Newport's pioneer summer
residents. He was one of New York's millionaires, and his Newport villa
is situated on Narragansett avenue near Cliffside, opposite the Pinard
cottages.

"Mr. Schermerhorn, with Mrs. Astor and ex-Commodore Gerry, of the New
York Yacht Club, in order to avoid the inheritance tax of New York, and
to take advantage of Newport's low tax-rate, obtained in January last
through their counsel, Colonel Samuel R. Honey, a decree declaring their
citizenship in Rhode Island. Since that time Mr. Schermerhorn's
residence has been in this state. In last year's tax-list he was
assessed for $150,000.

"Mr. Schermerhorn was a member of both the fashionable clubs on Bellevue
avenue, the Newport Casino and the Newport Reading-Room."

[161] For further details on this point see Chapter ix, Part II.

CHAPTER VIII

OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED

The founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from
land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with,
those that the Astors employed.

Next to the Astors' estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the
largest urban estates in the United States in value. The landed property
of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully
$200,000,000.

THE GOELET FORTUNE.

The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during
and succeeding the Revolution. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as
a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career
as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of
royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters.
Of Peter Goelet's business methods and personality no account is extant.
But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity.
In the course of this work it has already been shown in specific detail
how Peter Goelet in conjunction with John Jacob Astor, the Rhinelander
brothers, the Schermerhorns, the Lorillards and other founders of
multimillionaire dynasties, fraudulently secured great tracts of land,
during the early and middle parts of the last century, in either what
was then, or what is now, in the heart of New York City. It is entirely
needless to iterate the narrative of how the city officials corruptly
gave ov