RUTHERFORD, Alice Hanchett (later Mrs John Langdon Erving)

The sitter was born in California on November 6, 1872 and was the daughter of Mrs. Alexander Hitchcock Rutherford, later Mrs. George Crocker, née Miss Emma Hanchett (1855-1904). George Crocker had been an intimate friend of California mine owner Alexander Rutherford who died on March 16, 1893.  A year later, on June 5, 1894 he married Rutherford’s widow, Emma Hanchett Rutherford, in a fashionable Fifth Avenue ceremony in St. Thomas Church.  The San Francisco Call said “She is a beautiful woman, who has entertained well and intensively at her residence on Bush street, but since her husband’s death she has resided in New York City.”  Along with his bride came her three children, Alexander, Emma, the youngest daughter, and Alice. The couple bought a villa in Newport and a town house in New York City at 1 East 64th Street. Mrs. Crocker became a well-known hostess, entertaining lavishly. George Crocker also bought the Darling estate in Mahwah, New Jersey, on November 1, 1901, obtaining approximately 1,100 acres and a considerable number of buildings for $96,500, thus moving closer into the Havemeyer/Oelrichs family orbit. She married John Langdon Erving (born c. 1868) in 1904. She died in Santa Barbara, California on January 29, 1955. She bequeathed a portrait by John Singleton Copley of The Honorable John Erving (1693-c.1772) to Smith College Art Museum.