The Homestead: Worthingtons played key roles in 19th century life

"The Homestead" estate of mechanical engineer, inventor, businessman and farmer Henry Rossiter Worthington is shown as it would have appeared in about 1865 with its semicircular driveway accessing Broadway (right). H.R. Worthington lived in the main house, center left, while his father and retired business partner Asa Worthington lived in the property's cottage, rear right, from 1864 to Asa's death in 1875. H.R. Worthington's sister Mamie and a couple of his nieces lived in the cottage after 1875. Other extended family members lived in other buildings on the estate as well. The family farm in nearby unincorporated Town of Greenburgh land, stretched into today's Elmsford. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

The Worthington family made its country home in Gilded Age Irvington/Tarrytown, New York, for half a century after earning a fortune inventing, patenting, manufacturing and selling steam pumps and waterworks engines that were used well into the 20th century worldwide.

The family would include an heir who would earn an honorary knighthood from Queen Victoria, help bring the game of golf to this country, form his own automobile company and lay the foundations of the Professional Golfers' Association, or PGA as it is known today.

Inventor, mechanical engineer, farmer and businessman Henry Rossiter Worthington established what he called "The Homestead" sometime around 1864 in what was then considered Irvington. The estate of about 10 acres lay just north of West Sunnyside Lane, the Tarrytown-Irvington border after Tarrytown's incorporation in 1870, between the Old Croton Aqueduct and Broadway.

Irvington failed to incorporate until 1872 and the delay likely cost Irvington the property that became the so-called Millionaire's Row of great estates along both sides of Tarrytown's Broadway. Owners of "The Homestead" referred to the property's address as Irvington-on-Hudson well into the 20th century.

Pictured in an undated photo, perhaps from around 1910, is the greenhouse at the Henry Rossiter Worthington estate “The Homestead.” The greenhouse would be put to good use by Worthington and his family. He owned a nearby working farm called “Worthington Farms” between East Irvington and Elmsford. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

H.R. Worthington invented the first direct-acting steam pump in 1840, the first of many inventions that led to the foundation of his Worthington Pump & Machinery Corporation the same year. Worthington inventions and products would revolutionize society, pushing water through city water systems, steam heat into New York's skyscrapers and making an impact on nearly every major city on Earth.

The estate, which later became known as Northcote and finally Lincluden, included the main mansion in which H.R. Worthington lived with his wife, family and servants and a nearby "cottage" where his father and widowed retired business partner Asa Worthington (1788-1875) resided with H.R.'s uncle -- Asa's older brother Anthony (1784-1875) -- and household staff from about 1864 to Asa's death in 1875.

Henry Rossiter Worthington (1817-1880) is pictured in 1865 at age 48.
(Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

H.R.'s sister Mary -- known as Mamie -- lived in the cottage afterward with a couple of H.R.'s nieces. When H.R. died in 1880, his widow Sara Jane Newton Worthington moved into the cottage and her daughter, Sara Newton "Tasie" Worthington, who'd married financier William Lanman Bull, moved into the main house, by then known as Lincluden.

Sarah Newton Worthington came from a well-known Virginia lineage. Her father, U.S. Navy Commodore John T. Newton, was an officer in the War of 1812 and in 1843 led the first steam-powered crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a U.S. warship, the USS Missouri.

The home of Charles Campbell "C.C." Worthington at the northwest intersection of Fargo Lane and North Broadway in Irvington, N.Y., is pictured in about 1914. It was used as The Kyle School for Boys from 1914 to 1935 when the school founder, German immigrant Paul Kyle Ph.D., committed suicide on the grounds while he was awaiting trial on a charge of libel alleged by the mother of a former student. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Growing up at "The Homestead" was youngest son Charles Campbell "C.C." Worthington (1854-1944). C.C., an avid golfer who played a key role in the founding of the Professional Golfers Association -- the PGA, in 1912, got to know the game in Scotland and built a six-hole course at the family estate. He was a key figure in the 1888 founding of the longest continuously operating golf club in the U.S., St. Andrew's of Hastings and in the founding of the tony Ardsley Country Club in 1895.

C.C. took over the family business at age 26 after the death of his father in 1880. He also moved from the family estate to his own house several blocks south on Irvington's North Broadway just northwest of Fargo Lane. 

In 1885, Worthington pumps were used to overcome the seemingly impossible hurdle of moving water 200 miles across the African desert to a British expeditionary force en route to Khartoum, Sudan during the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Insurrection that led to an honorary knighthood for C.C. Worthington from Queen Victoria.

In 1899, C.C. sold his interest in Worthington Pump to a consortium that became the International Steam Pump Company, of which he became president until 1903 when provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act forced its dissolution and he retired from that field.

He quickly moved into the fledgling automobile manufacturing business, debuting as president of the Worthington Automobile Company in 1904. That company and a company it would buy in 1904, the Berg Automobile Company of Cleveland, would make cars from 1904 and 1906 in Worthington's Manhattan facility. The automaker had the financial backing of the Vanderbilt family, but the venture failed in 1905.

In 1903, C.C. began development of a golf course-related resort at his new 8,000-acre country retreat Shawnee on Delaware, Pa., on the Delaware River in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. The Buckwood Inn and golf course later became today's Shawnee Inn & Golf Resort.

In 1912, he invited some of the era's top professional golfers to compete at the resort, resulting in the founding of the original Professional Golfers' Association of America, or PGA.

His love of golf and disdain for the grass conditions caused by "mowing" by flocks of sheep led him to develop the first commercially successful three-wheeled gang mower for golf courses and the subsequent Worthington Mower Company which made the mowers and light farm tractors in Stroudsburgh, Pa., from around 1920 until its sale in 1945. The factory itself remained in operation under new ownership until around 1959.

C.C.'s brother-in-law, W. Lanman Bull, in a variety of incarnations, served as a stockbroker, director of five railroads and president of the New York Stock Exchange. 

In 1893, Sara Newton Worthington died and the Bull family tore down the cottage and redesigned the outdoor spaces of the estate.

The St. Joseph of Arimathea Episcopal Church at 2172 Saw Mill River Road, Greenburgh, was originally the Worthington Memorial Chapel, a family crypt, built in 1883 by the widow of Henry Rossiter Worthington. It was donated to the Episcopal Diocese of New York by the Worthington family and became a parish in 1896. It has been remodeled and expanded several times since its initial construction. It stands on four acres that were once part of Worthington Farms. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. (Wikimedia Commons, 2012)

"The Homestead" wasn't H.R. Worthington's only area property. His beloved Worthington Farms, a 110-acre working farm, was located between East Irvington and Elmsford. Its acreage included St. Joseph of Arimathea Episcopal Church and four surrounding acres at 2172 Saw Mill River Road (Rt. 9A), Greenburgh.

The church was known as Worthington Memorial Chapel when it opened in 1883, a memorial and crypt honoring the late H.R. Worthington by his widow, Sara. The church was donated to the Episcopal Diocese of New York by the Worthington family and became a parish in 1896.

The farm, home of H.R. Worthington's grandson Worthington Whitehouse until Whitehouse's death in 1922, featured a house, several barns, a dairy and orchards. An estate auction in 1922 featured a large selection of antiques. The farm was eventually overtaken by progress, its death knell coming in 1930 when much of its property was lost to the new Saw Mill River Parkway.

Tasie Worthington Bull sold Lincluden after her husband's death in January 1914. The buyer was Margaret Bathgate Becker (1861-1934), the supposed widow of New York fur merchant (Becker & Martin Furs) Charles E. Becker. 

Margaret's marital status was by no means clear. While she labeled herself a widow in the 1920 U.S. Census, it was a different story in her 1921 passport application when she stated she was still married to Charles E. Becker and he was living in Montreal, Canada. That declaration came under penalty of perjury. 

It's a good bet that Becker was still alive and the couple was either legally separated or Becker had abandoned his wife, their son Charles Bathgate Becker and their daughter, Emily Becker Lewis. Those adult children later lived with their mother at Lincluden.

The money in the family appears to have come from Mrs. Becker who received a surprise family legacy in 1904. The inheritance was a one-fifth share in cousin Charles Bathgate Beck's 150-acre Bronx estate north of today's 170th Street with Third Avenue running through its center. Mrs. Becker's Bathgate ancestors had supervised the Manhattan and 2,000-acre Bronx farm called the Manor of Morrisania of Founding Father Gouverneur Morris. Her ancestors accepted 150 acres of Morris farmland in lieu of pay. The farm they received included today's Crotona Park. The legacy was $240,000, $7 million today.

Margaret Becker sold the estate in 1922 to the new owners of the former Roswell Skeel Jr. estate next door, Caspar William Whitney and his third wife, Florence Canfield Whitney. The Whitneys razed Lincluden and absorbed the old Worthington  property into what is now the Belvedere estate, property of the Unification Church, at 723 South Broadway, Tarrytown. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The Roswell Skeel Jr. estate and what is now the Belvedere estate, will be discussed in separate future posts. ...

This 1891 map gives an glimpse of The Homestead/Northcote/Lincluden estate of the Worthington family just north of the Irvington line at West Sunnyside Lane. The Hudson River is at far left. The estate was then in possession of H.R. Worthington's widow, Sara Newton Worthington. The E.S. Jaffray estate Willowbrook is now the Monica Getz estate Shadowbrook. The Moses H. Grinnell estate Wolfert's Dell is shown in possession of the heirs of James H. Banker and the Roswell Skeel estate -- now, with the former Worthington property composing the Belvedere estate of the Unification Church -- is shown next to the Lyndhurst estate, now a living museum. (George Washington Bromley map, 1891. David Rumsey Map Collection)