John Turner Sargent, Jr.

Notes:

CEO of Macmillan Publishers.

His philanthropic activities include longtime service on the board of directors of Graham Windham, more recently called simply Graham, a nonprofit foster care agency providing services to needy children and families in the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1806, Graham, the oldest non-sectarian childcare agency in the United States, was originally the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York, co-founded by Eliza Hamilton after her husband Alexander Hamilton, himself an orphan, was killed in the famous duel with Aaron Burr — a grandson of John Sargent's 6X-grandfather the Rev. Jonathan Edwards. Thus Aaron Burr's first cousin six times removed has served for years on the board of Eliza Hamilton's orphanage.

He is also the author, under the anagrammatic pen name "S. T. Garne," of two children's books, One White Sail: A Caribbean Counting Book (1992) and By a Blazing Blue Sea (1999).

John married Constance Lane Murray on 21 Sep 1985. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"John Sargent, Former Doubleday President, Dies at 87." The New York Times, 8 Feb 2012:

John T. Sargent, who as president and later chairman of Doubleday & Company oversaw its expansion from a modest-size family-controlled book publisher to an industry giant with interests extending into broadcasting and baseball, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

The death was confirmed by his son, John T. Sargent Jr., the chief executive of Macmillan, the publishing company.

Mr. Sargent, who was already working for Doubleday when he married Neltje Doubleday, granddaughter of the company's founder, Frank Nelson Doubleday, in 1953, was named president and chief executive in 1961. At the time, the company was largely a trade book publisher; it also ran a book club, a New York bookstore and a modest printing concern.

Over the next 17 years, in partnership with Nelson Doubleday Jr., grandson of the founder, Mr. Sargent worked to expand all of those enterprises, largely succeeding in spite of a divorce in 1965 and an insurrection by a minority of the company's shareholders, led by his former wife, who wanted it to go public.

By 1979, the year after he left the presidency and was made chairman, Doubleday was publishing 700 books annually. The company had bought a textbook subsidiary and the Dell Publishing Company, which included Dell paperbacks. It was operating more than a dozen book clubs, including the mammoth Literary Guild; more than two dozen Doubleday bookshops across the country; and four book printing and binding companies.

In addition, Mr. Sargent led the company's expansion into radio and television broadcasting and film production. As chairman, he was involved in the company's purchase of the New York Mets in 1980.

The Doubleday company eschewed publicity and the prying of journalists. "The Sphinx Called Doubleday" was the headline on a 1979 article about the company in The New York Times, which described its publishing ethos this way: "There is no class of book that is considered a 'Doubleday book,' nor is there any book that would automatically be judged unsuitable for the Doubleday imprint. Generally speaking, the house frowns on books loaded with sex, it would be unlikely to publish an anti-Kennedy book since Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is an editor there, and it doesn't exhaust itself trying to lasso serious literature."

The company may have been known for its secretive ways, but Mr. Sargent was visible among the New York elite, both during business hours and after. A strapping man, dapper and sociable, he was a voracious reader, an erudite speaker and, at one time, a poetry editor who worked with Theodore Roethke, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, who became a friend and, according to family lore, spent more than one night sleeping in the Sargent bathtub after an evening of imbibing.

He dined with his famous authors — who included Daphne du Maurier, Peter Benchley, Alex Haley, Leon Uris and Stephen King — and other notable friends; attended A-list parties with socialites like Brooke Astor; frequented the opera; hobnobbed with movie stars. He was a friend and frequent escort of Mrs. Onassis, and hired her as an editor at Doubleday.

"The guy liked dressing up in a tux and going out," his son said. "The publishing world was his world, and the social aspect was part of it. It all folded together."

John Turner Sargent was born on June 26, 1924, and spent his early years in Cedarhurst, on Long Island. (No one in the family knows where, exactly, he was born, his son said, and his birth certificate has not yet been found.) His grandfather was the well-known botanist Charles Sprague Sargent; his father, Charles Jr., worked in finance. He went to St. Mark's School in Massachusetts and spent a year at Harvard before joining the Navy. Prevented from fighting overseas because of a punctured eardrum, he spent the war years "loading bombers in Florida," his son said.

After his discharge he worked briefly for Time magazine and then began at Doubleday, writing book jacket copy, in the late 1940s. Over the next several years he read manuscripts, sold syndication and subsidiary rights, worked as an advertising manager and editor and was business manager of several publishing divisions. As president of the company, he succeeded Douglas Black, who had succeeded Nelson Doubleday Sr.

Mr. Sargent met Ms. Doubleday, a painter who now lives in Wyoming, when he was 28 and she was 18. After their divorce she waged a long battle, enlisting some other shareholders, to get the company to sell shares to the public, but her mother, her brother and her former husband all lined up against her and the effort failed. The company was finally sold to the German conglomerate Bertelsmann in 1986.

A longtime colleague of Mr. Sargent, Samuel S. Vaughan, who served the company as editor in chief and publisher, died on Jan. 30.

In addition to John Jr., Mr. Sargent's survivors include a daughter, Ellen; six grandchildren; his wife, the former Betty Nichols Kelly, whom he married in 1985; and two stepchildren, Elizabeth Lee Kelly and James Hamilton Kelly.

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John Turner Sargent Sr. and Neltje Doubleday are 8th cousins, both being 7XG-grandchildren of the Rev. John Ward (1606-1693) and his wife Alice (1612-1680).

John married Neltje Doubleday on 16 May 1953 in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, and was divorced in Sep 1965. Neltje (daughter of Nelson Doubleday and Ellen George McCarter) was born in 1934. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

In recent decades, she changed her name, by court order, to simply "Neltje." In 2016 her autobiography North of Crazy was published by St. Martin's Press. A profile of her can be found here, and her Wikipedia page is here.

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Neltje Doubleday and John Turner Sargent Sr. are 8th cousins, both being 7XG-grandchildren of the Rev. John Ward (1606-1693) and his wife Alice (1612-1680).

Notes:

The New York Times, 16 Feb 1959, page 29:

Charles S. Sargent of 960 Park Avenue, a partner in Hornblower & Weeks, stockbrokers at 40 Wall Street, died Friday in Doctors Hospital, after a short illness. His age was 78.

Mr. Sargent, who graduated from Harvard in 1902, had been associated with Kidder, Peabody & Co.

He was a director of the American Express Company, the American Machine and Metals Company, United Merchants and Manufacturers, Inc., the Associated Dry Goods Corporation, the Metropolitan Fire Reassurance Company, and the National Aviation Corporation.

Born in Brookline, Mass., he was the son of Charles Sprague Sargent, Professor of Arboriculture at Harvard and Director of Arnold Arboretum, and Mary Robeson Sargent.

Mr. Sargent was a Mason. His clubs included the Harvard of New York, the Knickerbocker, Links and Ejwanok Country of Manchester, Vt.

Survivors include his widow, Dagmar; three sons, Charles S., Jr., Winthrop, and John T.; a daughter, Mrs. H. M. Havemeyer, and a sister, Mrs. N. B. Potter.

Charles married Dagmar Wetmore on 9 May 1912 in Grace Church, New York, New York. Dagmar (daughter of William Boerum Wetmore and Annette Wetmore) was born on 24 Jan 1888; died in Nov 1984 in New York, New York. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1885

Nelson married Ellen George McCarter. Ellen (daughter of Thomas Nesbitt McCarter and Madeleine G. Barker) was born on 9 May 1898; died on 2 Apr 1978 in New York, New York. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

After Nelson Doubleday's death in 1949, she served on the Doubleday board of directors until she moved to Hawaii in 1965.

Notes:

American botanist. He was appointed in 1872 as the first director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, and held the post until his death. He published several works of botany, and he was a friend of John Muir. The standard botanical author abbreviation Sarg. is applied to plants he identified.

Charles married Mary Allen Robeson on 26 Nov 1873. Mary (daughter of Andrew Robeson and Mary Arnold Allen) was born on 14 Jun 1853 in Newport, Newport, Rhode Island; died on 15 Aug 1919 in Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

According to "vanboerum2", he was an art and coin collector.

The Army and Navy Journal report of his wedding to Annette Wetmore describes him as "of the 9th N.G.S.N.Y., and formerly of the 6th U.S. Cavalry [...] Major Wetmore has a large acquaintance in the Army, having served as an officer of the 6th U.S. Cavalry from 1872 to 1876, and since maintained pleasant associations with his former comrades."

William married Annette Wetmore on 12 Apr 1882 in Grace Church, New York, New York, and was divorced in Apr 1892. Annette (daughter of David Wetmore and Caroline E. Bixby) was born in Feb 1862 in New York, New York; died on 5 Feb 1962; was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, Westchester, New York. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1863
• Alternate birth: 10 Feb 1863

Notes:

Her birth and death dates are clearly visible on her tombstone at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, next to the grave of her second husband, James Wright Markoe.

Notes:

Founder of the Doubleday publishing firm. Called "Effendi" by his friend Rudyard Kipling, a pun on his initials.

Frank married Neltje Blanchan De Graff on 9 Jun 1886 in Plainfield, Somerset, New Jersey. Neltje (daughter of Liverius De Graff and Alice Fair) was born on 23 Oct 1865 in Chicago, Illinois; died on 21 Feb 1918 in Canton, China. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

From the National Cyclopedia of American Biography (citation details below):

"The De Graffs and Blanchans, the latter originating in French Flanders, were among the first settlers of the Dutch-Huguenot colony at Esopus, N.Y. (1660). [Neltje Blanchan De Graff's] mother came of Scotch-Irish stock. One of her ancestors was Governor De Graff of St. Eustatius, Dutch West Indies, who was the first foreigner to salute the American flag (Nov. 16, 1776). Three years later a salute was given to the flag of Paul Jones' Ranger by the commander of a French squadron, but according to the historian Griffis, 'De Graff's was personally a nobler and bolder act, since he believed and acted on his own faith without orders.'" [The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, citation details below.]

Notes:

Attorney General of New Jersey, 1902-3. President of the Public Service Company of New Jersey.

Thomas married Madeleine G. Barker on 9 Feb 1897 in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland. Madeleine (daughter of George Yearly Barker and Ellen Schaefer) was born in of Rumson, New Jersey; died on 19 Dec 1957. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland
• Alternate birth: Feb 1876