Family
Henry H.M. Thornton was the son of James Worth Thornton and Elena Mumm Thornton, a German-Russian aristocrat and partial heir to the Mumm champagne fortune. Henry was the grandson of Sir Henry Worth Thornton. In 1946 James and Elena divorced, and Elena Mumm Thornton married Edmund Wilson in Reno, Nevada. Henry has a half-sister from Elena’s second marriage: Helen Miranda Wilson b. 1948. [4]
In 1957 Henry married Daphne Sellar, [5] from a prominent Newport, Rhode Island, family. Henry and Daphne had three daughters: twins, Sandra Christine and Elena Martha, and Nina Rosalie. In 1986 Sandra Thornton married Sheldon Whitehouse, who currently serves as US Senator from Rhode Island. [6] In 1985 Elena Thornton married Michael Case Kissel, [7] a producer and musician and 3rd-great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1973 Henry subsequently married Deborah Speno, granddaughter of Frank Speno, [8] inventor of a ballast cleaning mechanism, and founder of Speno Railroad Ballast Cleaning Co. from Ithaca, New York. Henry and Deborah had one son, James Speno Mumm.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. Born in Russia, he wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–38) while living in Berlin. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States and beginning to write in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945, but he and his wife returned to Europe in 1961, settling in Montreux, Switzerland.
Ezra Stiles was an American academic and educator, Congregationalist minister, theologian and author. He was seventh president of Yale College (1778–1795), and one of the founders of Brown University.
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publication. His scheme for a Library of America series of national classic works came to fruition through the efforts of Jason Epstein after Wilson's death.
John Brown I was an American merchant, slave trader, and statesman from Providence, Rhode Island. Together with his brothers Nicholas, Joseph and Moses, John was instrumental in founding Brown University and moving it to their family's former land in Providence. John Brown laid the cornerstone of the university's oldest building in 1770, and he served as its treasurer for 21 years. Brown was one of the founders of Providence Bank and became its first president in 1791. He was active in the American Revolution, notably as an instigator of the 1772 Gaspee Affair, and he served in both state and national government. At the same time, he was a powerful defender of slave trading, clashing aggressively—in newspapers, courts and politics—with his brother Moses, who had become an abolitionist. John Brown's home in Providence is now a museum and National Historic Landmark. Brown's desk and bookcase reside at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. The desk is attributed to Daniel Spencer, who opened his cabinetmaking studio in Providence, Rhode Island in 1772.
Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, and an essayist on literary and social topics. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. His books include The Joy of Gay Sex (1977), his trio of autobiographic novels, A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), and his biography of Jean Genet.
Raphael Pumpelly was an American geologist and explorer.
Sheldon Whitehouse is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Rhode Island since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Attorney from 1993 to 1998 and the 71st Attorney General of Rhode Island from 1999 to 2003.
Léonie Fuller Adams was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.
Sir Henry Worth Thornton, KBE was a businessman and president of Canadian National Railways. His parents were Henry Clay Thornton and Millamenta Comegys Worth. Henry W. Thornton married Virginia D. Blair, from a prominent Pittsburgh family, on June 20, 1901; They had two children: James Worth Thornton and Anna Blair Thornton (Harrison). In 1926 Sir Henry divorced his wife. He remarried shortly thereafter to Martha Watriss, daughter of prominent attorney and Nassau County Commissioner Frederick N. Watriss.
Jabez Bowen, Sr. was an American shipper, slave trader and politician. He was a militia colonel during the American Revolutionary War, and served as Deputy Governor of Rhode Island and Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
James Worth Thornton was an American businessman and scion of the politically and socially connected Thorntons of Indiana. Thornton was the son of Sir Henry Worth Thornton and Virginia Blair, daughter of banker and steel magnate George Dike Blair. Thornton also appeared in the journals of noted essayist Edmund Wilson.
Edmund Wilson Sr. was an American lawyer who served as the Attorney General of New Jersey from 1908 until 1914. He was the father of literary critic Edmund Wilson.
Moritz Karl Ferdinand Wilhelm Hermann Walther Mumm von Schwarzenstein was a German businessman and bobsledder who competed in the early 1930s. He was the one-time "champagne king" of Rheims in France, as part of the Mumm champagne making family.
Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson was born into an unusual, wealthy, aristocratic European family and was the fourth wife of the famed American writer Edmund Wilson. Elena was a central figure in Wilson's life from the time they met until his death in 1972. She was the literary executrix of his estate and helped Leon Edel edit her husband's journals. She also edited a book of his literary correspondence.
This is a list of works by writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Karl von Struve was a Russian nobleman and politician. He served, in turn, as Russian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan, the United States, and the Netherlands.
William Farquhar Payson was an American author and editor.
Geoffrey Theodore Hellman was an American journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker.
Henry Bull (1610–1694) was an early colonial Governor of Rhode Island, serving for two separate terms, one before and one after the tenure of Edmund Andros under the Dominion of New England. Sailing from England as a young man, Bull first settled in Roxbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but soon became a follower of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson, and was excommunicated from the Roxbury church. With many other followers of Hutchinson, he signed the Portsmouth Compact, and settled on Aquidneck Island in the Narragansett Bay. Within a year of arriving there, he and others followed William Coddington to the south end of the island where they established the town of Newport.
Douglas McCrae Black was an American lawyer and publishing house executive, president of Doubleday and Company from 1946 to 1963 and president of the American Book Publishers Council.
