In 1910, Gerry married Mathilde Scott Townsend (1885–1949), the daughter of Richard H. Townsend (1850–1902), the President of the Erie and Pittsburgh Railroad, and the granddaughter of William Lawrence Scott (1828–1891), a Pennsylvania railroad and coal magnate who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. They did not have children and divorced in 1925. Later that same year, Mathilde married Sumner Welles (1892–1961), who was seven years her junior, and who had divorced his wife, Esther Slater, in 1923. At the time, rumors circulated around Washington that Sumner and Mathilde were having an affair that wrecked both their marriages. Second marriage On October 22, 1925, Gerry married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser (1873–1958), the widow of George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862–1914). Edith, a daughter of Maj. George Warren Dresser, was the mother of Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt (1900–1976), who married John Francis Amherst Cecil, son of Lord William Cecil and Mary Rothes Margaret Tyssen-Amherst, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney. Death Gerry died on October 31, 1957 in Providence, Rhode Island. His elder brother, Robert Livingston Gerry, died several hours later in Delhi, New York. He was buried at St James Cemetery, Hyde Park, New York. His widow died on December 21, 1958. References Further reading External links Schlup, Leonard, "Wilsonian Moralist: Senator Peter G. Gerry and the Crusade for the League of Nations," Rhode Island History 58 (February 2000) The Diary of William Lyon Mackenzie King References to Peter Gerry and Robert Gerry in Mackenzie King diary |- |- |- |- |- |- |- 1879 births 1957 deaths Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Rhode Island Democratic Party United States senators from Rhode Island Gerry family Goelet family Harvard University alumni Livingston family Politicians from New York City Lawyers from New York City