The Armstrong Family Photographs Collection (PSNCA.H.024)

Biographical/Historical Note

Originally hailing from Scotland, the Armstrong family became established in America following the emigration of David Armstrong in the early part of the 18th century. During the Revolutionary War William Armstrong, from the branch of the family that had stayed in Scotland, likewise came to America as part of the British army and later settled in Manhattan and married Margaret Marshall. Their son, Edward Armstrong, expanded the family's land holdings and with his wife Sarah Hartley Ward built the Greek-revival Danskammer estate, which would remain in the family until the 1970s. The couple had six children, prominent among whom was David Maitland Armstrong.

David Maitland Armstrong studied law at Trinity College, and later art in Paris and Rome. In 1869 he was appointed charge d'affaires to the Papal States and then the Consul-General in Rome in 1871, but left the diplomatic serve due to the insufficient salary. By then he was already a painter and renowned stained glass artist, and upon his return to New York he devoted himself to the art of design as the head of the firm Maitland, Armstrong and Co. He came to be one of the foremost exponents of American opalescent stained glass, and worked with Louis C. Tiffany and John La Farge. He was instrumental in establishing the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its initial location at 681 Fifth Avenue in 1872, and in 1878 was made the director of that year's Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris. In 1866 he married Helen Neilson, a niece of Hamilton Fish, the sisteenth Governor of New York and the U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Grant and Hayes. The couple had seven children, several of whom also became prominent in the arts.

Of particular note was Margaret Neilson Armstrong, an illustrator in the art nouveau style. She designed over 270 book covers and bindings before turning to writing in the early part of the 20th century, and has been called the most productive and accomplished American book designer of the 1890s and 1900s. An avid botonast, she also discovered several species of flowers while travelling America. She sometime collaborated with her sister, Helen Maitland Armstrong, a stained glass artist. Helen had been trained by their father, who eventually made her a junior partner in his firm. Though she also worked on mosaics, murals, and illustrations, her stained glass was considered among the finest in America at the height of the Gilded Age. One of their brothers, Hamilton "Ham" Fish Armstrong, initially worked as a military attache to Serbia during World War I. After the war he bacame the managing editor of the influential political journal Foreign Affairs, and later the editor. Another brother, Edward Maitland Armstrong, worked as a landscape artist in New York City. In 1901 he married Gwendolen King the daughter of David King, lately of the China Trade, and Ella Louisa Rives, the granddaugher of distinguished Virginian senator William Cabell Rives. The couple had three children: David King Maitland Armstrong, Edward Maitland Armstrong Jr., and Gwendolen Ella Rives Armstrong.