Alexandra Gardiner Creel

rdf:langString Alexandra Gardiner Creel

rdf:langString Alexandra Gardiner Creel

rdf:langString Alexandra Gardiner Creel

rdf:langString Heiress to historic Gardiners Island

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString Alexandra Gardiner Creel (1910–1990) was a member of the , who were prominent bankers and landowners, known for their ownership of 3,300-acre (13 km2) Gardiners Island, located off the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. Her father died in 1918, when she was eight years old, leaving $1,000,000 in trust to raise her and her older brother, Robert David Lion Gardiner. In 1921, her mother went to court to challenge the terms of the trust, claiming she was not able to maintain her children with the funds the managers released. The New York Times reported that Alexandra married James Randall Creel in a quiet ceremony, without informing her family. They reported her mother confronted the minister who performed the marriage, and she was so upset she had to be calmed by the Chief of Police. Her aunt Sarah Diodati Gardiner, who had purchased Gardiners Island from her cousin Winthrop Gardiner Jr., in 1936, created a trust so she could leave the island to her and her brother, Robert David Lion Gardiner. The trust would pay the taxes and costs to maintain the property, but the terms of the trust did not allow them to sell the Island. Alexandra and Robert became the beneficiaries of the trust upon their aunt's death in January 1953. The trust's money was depleted in the 1970s. Alexandra's death left a long-running dispute between her brother and her daughter Alexandra Creel Goelet over the future of the island, which the Gardiner family first acquired in a manorial grant from the King of England in 1639.