Glenview’s First Family

Glenview was the home of the Trevors for 45 years. In 1877, when the house was completed, John Bond Trevor and Emily Norwood Trevor moved in with their daughters Mary and Emily, a son, Henry, the child of his first marriage to the late Louisa Stewart, and several servants.

John Bond Trevor
1822–1890

Emily Norwood Trevor
1842–1922

Henry Graff Trevor
1865–1937

Mary Tallmadge Trevor Winthrop
1871–1900

Emily Howell Trevor
1874–1943

John B. Trevor
1878–1956

John Bond Trevor, a native of Philadelphia, moved to New York City in 1849 and made his fortune as a Wall Street banker and stockbroker. He built Glenview for his second wife, Emily Norwood, after the death of his first wife, Louisa Stewart. John and Emily moved to the new house in August 1877 with their daughters Mary and Emily, a son, Henry, from John’s first marriage, and several servants.

Living in Glenview from April through December, John Bond Trevor commuted to his Wall Street office on a regular basis. When at leisure in Yonkers, he was devoted to living the life of a country squire, driving his trotting horses and focusing on his main hobby, horticulture. John was also involved with the local community, helping to build the Warburton Avenue Baptist Church and to found what eventually became St. John’s Riverside Hospital. He also helped to support the Yonkers Free Reading Room and the local YMCA.

Emily Norwood Trevor was the daughter of diplomat Andrew Norwood; the great-granddaughter of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, a military officer in the American Revolutionary War; and a descendant of William Floyd, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. She and John had two daughters, Mary and Emily, by the time the family moved into Glenview. Her son with Trevor, John Bond Trevor, Jr., was born at the new house in 1878.

Emily Norwood Trevor was a founder and vice-president of the Colonial Dames of America. Like her husband, she was also active in the Yonkers community. Her charity included involvement with the Yonkers Ladies Employment Society, the Industrial School, and the Baptist Sewing School. After her husband’s death in 1890, Mrs. Trevor and her younger daughter, Emily, continued to divide their time between New York and Yonkers.

Henry was John Bond Trevor’s son from his first marriage. By the late 1880s, Henry played on local amateur baseball and football teams and joined the Yonkers Yacht Club. He purchased and raced a famous yacht, the cutter Madge. He was also a member of St. Andrews, the first golf club in the country, located in Yonkers.

In December 1890 Henry married Margaret Schieffelin, daughter of a prominent New York City attorney, and had five children with her. They lived in Southampton, where Henry raised prize-winning poodles, and in New York City.

As young girls in Yonkers, Mary and Emily may have attended Miss Lucy Crocker’s English and French Day School on Palisades Avenue. In 1892, Mary married Grenville Winthrop, a Harvard-educated attorney descended from John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Yonkers. A special train brought guests up from New York City. Mrs. Trevor hosted Mary Trevor’s wedding reception at Glenview.

Mary and Grenville divided their time between a country house in Lenox, Massachusetts, and a city house in Manhattan at 10 East 37th Street, just one block from a house Mrs. Trevor bought for herself and Emily in 1894. Mary had two daughters: Emily and Kate. In a sad twist of fate, Mary died at age 29, possibly having never recovered from the birth of baby Kate. Her funeral was held in the parlor, a common practice at the time.

Emily Trevor, who never married, lived with her mother at Glenview and at the East 37th Street house in New York City. Emily loved outdoor activities and regarded her time in Yonkers as a “country” retreat. She, John, and Henry, all took up the newly popular sport of golf. Emily joined the Ardsley Country Club, which was unusual in permitting women members. She also played the role of hostess and had stream of women friends coming up from New York City as weekend guests.

John, who was a constant companion to his sister Emily, took walks, drove the ponies, bicycled, and played the newly popular sport of golf, which he, Emily, and Henry all took up in the 1890s. He wrote in his memoirs that, as a child, Glenview seemed a “paradise,” except during the extreme heat of the summer, when the family would often vacation in cooler places, including the Catskills. He attended the private Cutler School in New York City.

In 1908, John B. Trevor married Caroline Wilmerding, daughter of Lucius K. Wilmerding, President of the Union Club and a merchant. They lived in New York City and had two boys, John and Bronson, who spent many happy days at Glenview, visiting their grandmother.