Frank Bailey

Who was Frank Bailey?

Frank Bailey was a Brooklyn-based financier and philanthropist. He was married to Marie Louise Eastman. They maintained a city residence in Brooklyn, and a country residences in Locust Valley, which they purchased in 1911 and jokingly named 'Munnysunk'. The estate became the 42-acre Bailey Arboretum.

Bailey was born in Chatham, New York. His father, Dr. William Cady Bailey, was a medical doctor and amateur naturalist. His mother was a school-teacher and homemaker, 20 years younger than his father, a relative of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College. His parents' house was a station on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves.

After going to a local school, then Spencertown Academy, Frank Bailey attended and graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1885 on a scholarship after Williams College turned him down for lack of finances). He served as the Union College treasurer for 51 years, and the college's Frank Bailey Field is named after him.

His career began as a clerk at the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. By 1891 he became vice president of its Brooklyn office, and later became company president until 1924.