Wilderstein is a 19th-century Queen-Anne-style country house on the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is a not-for-profit house museum. Background Thomas Holy Suckley was a wealthy property developer in Manhattan. He was the son of devout Methodist George Suckley and his second wife Catherine Rutsen. George settled in New York City and became agent for the British mercantile establishment that would later become Holy, Newbould, & Suckley. He was well acquainted with most of the prominent Methodists of the time and active in supporting their ministry. Thomas Suckley's mother Catherine was the daughter of John Rutsen, whose maternal grandfather was Gilbert Livingston, son of Robert Livingston, Lord of Livingston Manor. John Rutsen was a close friend of Catherine Livingston Garrettson, the wife of the notable Methodist preacher, Freeborn Garrettson (1752 – 1827). In 1799, the Garrettsons purchased 160 acres in Rhinebeck, New York, where they established an estate called Wildercliff, and welcomed many circuit riding Methodist preachers. Frequent visitor Francis Asbury called it "Traveler's Rest". Around 1850, the estate passed to their only child, Mary Rutherford Garrettson. History The Wilderstein property was originally part of the Wildercliff estate. In June 1853, Thomas Suckley, purchased from Mary Garrettson thirty-rwo acres of river-front property, which until then had served as a sheep meadow for the adjacent Wildercliff estate.<ref>[https://dchsny.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Wildercliff-4MannyAndrew.pdf "Wildercliff", Year Book Dutchess County Historical Society, vol. 17, 1932]</ref> (Mary Garrettson's mother Catherine was the granddaughter of Gilbert Livingston's older brother, Robert Livingston of Clermont). Suckley and his wife Catherine Murray Bowne chose the property as a building site for their mansion, because they considered the landscape a good match for their picturesque aesthetic ideal. The name "Wilderstein" ("wild stone" in German) was chosen by Suckley to allude to an American Indian petroglyph found nearby and reflect the site's historical significance. In total, three generations of the Suckley family inhabited the mansion. The last family member was Daisy Suckley, a cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt for whom she trained his famous terrier Fala. Daisy Suckley died in the Wilderstein mansion in 1991, six months before her 100th birthday. The mansion is nine miles up-river, on the same side, from FDR's Hyde Park Home, Springwood. Description The mansion commissioned for the site was a two-storey Italianate villa designed by architect John Warren Ritch. In 1888, Thomas Suckley's son Robert Bowne Suckley and his wife, Elizabeth Philips Montgomery, undertook