Martin Ryerson Zborowski (1810-1878)

He owned 7-acres in Manhattan near Central Park and along the banks of the Hudson River, and several blocks on Fifth Avenue which at his death was said to be worth several millions. The accumulation of his great fortune, "was the labor of his own hands, and through his long life he looked after his own affairs," however a large portion of his real estate was unproductive, being in vacant lots. He lived in Hohokus until 1838 when he spent $68,000 building his new home (see images) on an 80-acre estate in Upper Morrisania, occupied today by Claremont Park. It was located in the northern part of the former Morris estate (his wife was a great-granddaughter of Lewis Morris, 3rd Lord of the Manor of Morrisania) that was auctioned off in lots from 1848.

The Tax-Assessor of West Farms remembered him as, "the queerest old fellow that I ever met in my life, so eccentric and curious in his ways. Why, let me tell you! Whenever he came into the tax office he always sought for me, and I used to go around with him to see about the assessments on his property, which was variously located about the city. Once I took down a book to show him some assessment or other, and after looking down the page, he told me he couldn't find his name. 'There it is, sir,' said I, pointing to the name Martin Zabriskie, when he grew quite excited, and asked why I kept his name Zabriskie. He said Zabriskie was not his name, and then, taking out a pencil, wrote above it Zborowski, telling me that was his name, and that he wouldn't pay another cent of taxes to the City of New York under the name Zabriskie. He would get mortally offended at being called Zabriskie, and said his name was 'Zborowski, with a ki not kie.' He always fought with us about paying taxes on his personal property, and went to law about it."

His surname at birth was "Zabriskie" but in the 1860s, after he attended the wedding in Paris of his daughter to Charles-François de Montsaulnin, the aristocratic world with which he was confronted made such an impression on him that he adopted the surname "Zborowski," the name of a noble Polish family, on account of his known descent from an almost certainly not noble immigrant, Albert Zaborowsky (1638-1711), progenitor of the Zabriskie family in America. His son, Elliott (who married a granddaughter of "The Landlord of New York" William Backhouse Astor) and Elliott's son, Louis, then went one step further, styling themselves - without any evidence at all - as the "Counts Zborowski." No-one else in the extended Zabriskie family, including his siblings, followed suit.

After his first wife (mother of his four children) died, he remarried Mrs. Belle Hewitt, a young and beautiful Southern widow and sister-in-law of Mrs. (Frances Hewitt) Walker Fearn, the wife of the American Minister to Greece and mother-in-law of Prince Serge Wolkonsky. Belle's daughter by her first marriage, Marie, was married to the sculptor Charles Wilkinson, of 70 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris. In Zborowski's will, he left his stepdaughter, Marie, $80,000 in bonds and an interest in the mines at Fours de Chaux de la Basse-Loire. To his daughter, Anna, he left $100,000 in bonds and all the furniture in his house in Paris as well as a number of lots in the 12th Ward of New York City. The rest of his real estate, including his house in Morrisania, he left to his only surviving son, while his stocks and remaining bonds were divided equally between his living children.