Mai's first marriage to Joseph C. Mott was annulled. Her father and her close family friend Mark Twain both labeled her first husband a "scalawag". However, her second marriage fared much better. On June 4, 1900, at her father's home in New York City, 24-year-old Mai Rogers married
William Robertson Coe, a 30-year-old English-born
insurance company manager from Philadelphia, whom she had met on a transatlantic crossing. It was the second marriage for each. Mai Rogers was married in full virginal bridal regalia, "gowned in white satin, veiled with exquisitely embroidered tulle, and wore a veil of tulle embroidered to match the tulle draperies of the dress,"
The New York Times reported the day after the wedding. "This veil was caught to her coiffure with a diamond sunburst, and at one side of her corsage she wore a Maltese cross in diamonds, the gift of the bridegroom." Together, Mai and William Robertson Coe had four children: •
William Rogers Coe (1901–1971) •
Robert Douglas Coe (1902–1985) • Henry Huttleston Rogers Coe (1907–1966) •
Natalie Mai Coe, Countess Vitetti (1910–1987). By 1910, William Robertson Coe had become president of
Johnson and Higgins Insurance, and he was involved in insuring the hull of the
RMS Titanic which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Like many other famous families of the
Gilded Age, the Coe family had been booked for the ill-fated liner's return trip to
Southampton, England. By 1916, Coe had been named Chairman of the Board of Johnson and Higgins. Coe was on the Board of Directors of
The Virginian Railway Company from 1910 until his death in 1955 and headed the company for a brief period during
World War II. He was also a director of
Loup Creek Colliery and the
Wyoming Land Company. Their oldest son, William Rogers Coe, was also a longtime official of his grandfather's railroad.
Planting Fields Mai and her husband shared a love of
horticulture. They purchased a large estate,
Planting Fields, in 1913. It had been established in 1904 by
Helen MacGregor Byrne – wife of New York City lawyer James Byrne, and built on the
Gold Coast of
Long Island, New York in
Oyster Bay. When used as the Coe family estate, the mansion was referred to as "the residence" or "the house". The name "Coe Hall" was coined much later, when the land was used as a temporary campus for the
State University of New York (SUNY) in the 1950s and 1960s. The Coes began planting and landscaping under the guidance of the Boston landscaping firm of
Guy Lowell and
A. R. Sargent. In 1915, Lowell and Sargent oversaw transport of the two
beech trees from Fairhaven (Mai's childhood home). The gigantic beeches, with root balls thirty feet (nine metres) in diameter, were ferried across
Long Island Sound in mid-winter. Roads were widened and utility wires temporarily removed to make way. Only one of the two trees survived the journey. The second beech tree lived until the 21st century, but was taken down in February 2006. However, the "Fairhaven Beech" will live on. Seedlings were collected from the tree from 2000 to 2005. The property's first mansion burned to the ground on March 19, 1918; its replacement, the present Main House (previously referred to as Coe Hall), was constructed between 1918 and 1921 in the
Tudor Revival style and faced in
Indiana limestone. It was designed by the firm of
Walker & Gillette and was completed in 1921. Images from a book of
English country houses, especially those of
Moyns Park,
Athelhampton, and
St. Catherine's Court, inspired its architecture. William and Mai Coe's interest in rare species of trees and plant collections made the estate a botanical marvel. Mai was chronically ill for the last decade of her life. Following an extended illness, Mai died in 1924, aged 49, and was interred nearby. == Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park ==