Around 1897, Mackay met
Katherine Alexander Duer (1880–1930), a debutante from an old, high society, New York family that he met on a steamship crossing between New York and England. She was a descendant of Lady Kitty Duer, daughter of
Lord Stirling. They fell in love and were married on May 17, 1898.
Harbor Hill in
Roslyn, Long Island, the site of their future estate with the striking view of Hempstead Harbor, was Katherine's and Clarence's wedding present from the senior Mackays. Katherine oversaw much of the design and building of their mansion at Harbor Hill which was designed by
Stanford White of
McKim, Mead, and White and was the largest home White ever designed. Katherine was a
suffragette and a champion of women's rights and became the first woman member of the Roslyn school board in 1905. Together, Clarence and Katherine were the parents of three children: • Katherine Mackay (1900–1971), who married
Kenneth O'Brien (1895–1954) in 1922. They divorced and she remarried to Robert Ziemer Hawkins (1903–1979) in 1938. •
Ellin Mackay (1903–1988), who fell in love with the popular composer
Irving Berlin, to the fury of her father. Berlin was a Russian immigrant, an Orthodox Jewish widower fifteen years older than she. When Ellin insisted on marrying Berlin in 1926, Clarence disinherited her. However, Berlin was already wealthy at this stage, the most popular songwriter of his time. • John William Mackay (1907–1988), who married Josephine Gwendolyn Rose (1908–2004) Blake in turn ran away with her nurse. The marriage officially ended in divorce in
Paris in 1914. Katherine returned to New York in 1930, the same year she died from cancer. Because of religious convictions (he was a traditional Irish-American Catholic), Mackay would not remarry as long as his first wife, Katherine, lived. Therefore, Clarence and
Anna Case (1888–1984) waited until after Katherine's death in 1930, and were subsequently married in on July 18, 1931, at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in
Roslyn, New York. His wedding gift to Case was a platinum-set emerald and diamond necklace. The emerald was mined in
Colombia and the necklace designed by
Cartier. Case was a
lyric soprano who sang with the Metropolitan Opera and as a concert soloist. "Her life changed dramatically following an engagement to sing at a private musicale given in the home of Clarence H. Mackay (c. 1916). Taken with her beauty, he sent a carload of flowers to her at her next
Carnegie Hall recital, enclosing a small diamond band with an enamel bluebird in the center." He died of cancer on November 12, 1938. His funeral was at
St. Patrick's Cathedral where the
New York Philharmonic played. He was buried at
Green-Wood Cemetery.
Legacy Anna Case Mackay donated her diamond necklace to the
Smithsonian Institution in 1984. Clarence Mackay was a noted collector of medieval suits of armor, some of which he sold to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1930s. An aviation trophy, administered by the United States
National Aeronautic Association and awarded yearly by the
United States Air Force for the "most meritorious flight of the year" by an Air Force person, persons, or organization, is named in Mackay's honor. The
Mackay Mountains are a prominent group of peaks south of the
Allegheny Mountains in the
Ford Ranges of
Marie Byrd Land,
Antarctica. They were discovered by the
Byrd Antarctic Expedition in 1934, and named for Clarence Mackay, a benefactor of the expedition. ==Notes==