Harriett Pullman (1869-1956)

She was born in Chicago and grew up principally at the Pullman Mansion. She was the prettier daughter of the founder of the Pullman Sleeping Palace Car Company and growing up her father gave her a $100 every time she named one of his 2,000 rail cars. When she married into San Francisco society at the age of twenty one in 1892, she was given a $500,000 trust fund which was topped up by an additional $1 million when her father died in 1897. She is remembered as the builder of Carolands, a 98-room French chateau in California that for many years was the largest private house west of the Mississippi. Sadly, the project depleted her funds, and her husband. They separated just two years after its completion and she left California for New York. In 1925, she married into the old Knickerbocker aristocracy when she wed Colonel Arthur F. Schermerhorn. They lived between 111 East 48th and Spring Lawn in Lenox, Massachusetts, but despite leaving what the Colonel supposed to be over a million dollars to his wife, when he died in 1934 he was found to be insolvent. Harriett was the honorary President of the Outdoor Cleanliness Association. She died at 71 East 71st Street, Manhattan, without children.