Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust records

Mary Flagler Cary (1901-1967) was the daughter of Harry Harkness and Anne Lamont Flagler, and the granddaughter of Henry Morrison Flagler, one of the founders of Standard Oil Company and a noted developer of the east coast of Florida. Raised in New York and on the family estate in Millbrook, New York, she married Melbert B. Cary Jr. (1892-1941) in 1923.

The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust was established in January 1968, as a testamentary, charitable trust by the will of the late Mary Flagler Cary, with the purpose of preserving the family collections and the Cary estate, Cannoo Hills, in Millbrook, New York. It was established with a term limit of fifty years and assets of $72 million. Its founding trustees were Edward S. Bentley, Herbert J. Jacobi, Helen Stanton, and Frank B. Stubbs, later joined by Edward A. Ames, Phyllis J. Mills, and Paul B. Guenther. The Trust’s administrator was Lois M. Regan.

The Trust’s first emphases were on music in New York City and on the conservation of natural resources, both of which were of great interest to Mrs. Cary. Funding was later extended to include teacher-training programs, medical research, and various community organizations in the boroughs of New York City.

The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust trustees were empowered to terminate the Trust at anytime, and decided to terminate on June 30, 2009. The Trust’s activities were regularly described in a series of published reports beginning in 1968, and summed up in their final report, A Trust Fulfilled: Four Decades of Grantmaking by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, by Heide Waleson (New York: the Trust, 2009).