The Father of the Four Hundred
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Ward McAllister was long the most famous of Manhattan’s social arbiters. McAllister was born in Savannah, Ga., in 1827, but he and his jurist father struck it rich practicing mining law in California during the 1849 Gold Rush. After coming East in 1853 and marrying an heiress, he spent several years in Europe, where he studied wines, haute cuisine, and the etiquette of balls and formal receptions. He moved to New York after the Civil War.
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