William Astor Chanler (June 11, 1867 – March 4, 1934) was an American soldier, explorer, and politician who served as U.S. Representative from New York. He was a member of the Astor family and the Stuyvesant family. After spending several years exploring East Africa, he embarked on a brief political career. Chanler regarded it as an American obligation to be on the side of the people who fought for their independence, and during his life he participated in rebellions and independence struggles in Cuba, Libya, and Somalia. He provided support for insurgents in Venezuela, Turkey, and China. He maintained an active lifestyle even after losing his right leg in 1915. Late in life, he became a novelist and an outspoken antisemite.
Family and early life Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Chanler was third son of John Winthrop Chanler (1826–1877) of the Stuyvesant family and Margaret Astor Ward (1838–1875) of the Astor family. Through his father, he was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Peter StuyvesantChanler's grandfather John White Chanler married Elizabeth Shirreff Winthrop, daughter of Benjamin Winthrop and Judith Stuyvesant (Peter's great-great-granddaughter) and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Wait Winthrop and Joseph Dudley. Through his mother, he was a grandnephew of Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), John Jacob Astor III (1822–1890), and William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (1829–1892).
Chanler had ten brothers and sisters,Thomas, Lately. The Astor Orphans: A Pride of Lions, Washington Park Press, 1999. including the politician Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler and the artist Robert Winthrop Chanler. His younger sister Margaret Livingston Chanler served as a nurse with the American Red Cross during the Spanish–American War. William's older brother Winthrop Astor ChanlerWinthrop Astor Chanler served in the Rough Riders in Cuba and was wounded at the Battle of Tayacoba. His eldest brother John Armstrong "Archie" Chanler married novelist Amélie Louise Rives.Donna M. Lucey, Archie and Amélie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age. New York: Harmony Books, 2007. . His older sister Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler married author John Jay Chapman.
Chanler and his siblings became orphans after the death of their mother in December 1875 and their father in October 1877, both to pneumonia. The children were raised at their parents' Rokeby Estate in Barrytown, New York. John Winthrop Chanler's will provided $20,000 a year for each child for life (equivalent to $470,563 in 2018 dollars), enough to live comfortably by the standards of the time.
Education Chanler attended St. John's Military Academy in Ossining, New York, then Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Harvard University, which he left on his twenty-first birthday in 1888, after he completed his sophomore year. While a student there he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and elected to the Porcellian Club. Harvard later awarded him an honorary master's degree in 1895."HARVARD COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT DAY: Degrees Were Conferred," New York Herald, June 27, 1895.
Marriage and children
Chanler enjoyed theater, and in 1902 he saw actress Beatrice Ashley in a production of A Country Girl starring C. Hayden Coffin at Augustin Daly's theater in London. Ashley was already well known after appearing in John Philip Sousa's operetta El Capitan (1896) starring DeWolf Hopper, as well as The Geisha (1896), The Circus Girl (1897), A Greek Slave (1899) and San Toy (1900 and 1902).
Ashley was anxious to quit her stage career due to damage to her eyesight resulting from prolonged exposure to theatrical arc lights. After a brief courtship, she married Chanler on December 4, 1903, at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan."W. ASTOR CHANLER WEDS. FORMER CONGRESSMAN MARRIES MINNIE ASHLEY, ACTRESS." Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1903, p. 3. They had two sons:
William Astor Chanler, Jr. (1904–2002), published historianChanler, William Astor, Jr. And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time: A Seven Hundred Acre Island Reminiscence. Rockport, ME: Outerbridge Books, 1984. Sidney Ashley Chanler (1907–1994), public relations executive who in 1934 married Princess Maria Antonia of Braganza, daughter of the Duke of Braganza and Princess Maria Theresa of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg.
He and Beatrice separated on good terms in 1909.
Beatrice Ashley became an author and a sculptor, studying under George Gray Barnard. She was president of two relief organizations, the Friends of Greece and the Committee of Mercy, and also managed the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund. For her philanthropic work she was decorated as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour"Mrs. William A. Chanler Dies," The Rhinebeck Gazette / Red Hook Times, Rhinebeck, NY June 27, 1946, p. 10. and was awarded (posthumously) the Greek Order of the Phoenix.
African explorations
Visit to Kilimanjaro, 1889
A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London, of the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society of Austria, and of the American Geographical Society of New York,"FELLOWS.: CORRECTED TO DECEMBER 31, 1892." Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York; January 1, 1892; p. xviii. Chanler first visited Africa in May 1889 in the company of his friends George Galvin (then only 15 years old)Galvin, George E., Diary of George E. Galvin, Chanler Expedition, Kenya, 1888–1890 compiled by George E. Galvin Jr., Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1996. and Royal Phelps Carroll."HUNTING AFRICAN GAME: American Sportsmen Slay Two Hundred Ferocious Beasts," The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 5, 1890, p. 1. They traveled to Zanzibar and then to the coast of Kenya, going overland to Tsavo and then through lands inhabited by the Taveta people, where they encountered ornithologist William Louis Abbott and geologist Hans Meyer. They continued into Maasai territory to explore the area around Mount Kilimanjaro."Personalities." The Independent: Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, November 7, 1889; 41:2136; p. 8.Chanler, William A., "Hunting in East Africa," in Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnel, eds, Hunting in Many Lands: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 1895. Chanler took with him a state-of-the-art Kodak camera designed to take four thousand photos without reloading, but upon his return it was discovered that the camera had not been properly loaded with film.Battes, C. G., "A Plucky Young Explorer: William Astor Chanler, His Travels and His Photograph Camera," Idaho Daily Statesman, Mar 24, 1894, p. 5. He and Galvin traveled to Europe in November 1889 and arrived in New York in May 1890.
After returning to the US, Chanler visited Wyoming in 1890 and became friends with Butch Cassidy, who escorted him to the Hole-in-the-Wall bandit hideout.
Journey with Ludwig von Höhnel, 1892–1894 Between 1892 and 1894 he explored the territory in the vicinity of Mount Kenya with George Galvin and Ludwig von Höhnel, a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy."W.A. CHANLER'S EXPLORATIONS: Hitherto Unknown Mountains and Rivers in East Africa," New York Times June 14, 1894; p. 9. Departing from Mkunumbi on September 18, 1892, they proceeded inland from the coast, mapping the Guasso Nyiro River, the Lorian Swamp, the Tana River, Lake Rudolph and then Lake Stefanie.Wm. Astor Chanler's Expedition Route Map of a journey to the East of MT. Kenia 5th. Dec. 1892– 10th. Feb. 1893, University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They were the first westerners to come into contact with the Bantu Tigania and Igembe Meru in this region (Carl Peters had passed to the south in 1889). On January 30, 1893, they were attacked by some 200 warriors of the Wamsara (a subgroup of the Meru), who retreated after killing three porters.Imperato, P. J. (1998). Quest for the Jade Sea: Colonial competition around an East African lake. Boulder, Co., Westview Press
In early February the expedition was stranded in what is now the Meru North District of Kenya because of the death of all of its 165 pack animals (probably due to trypanosomiasis) and the desertion of many of the 160 porters."IS CHANLER LOST? Alarming News of the Plucky Young Explorer," Trenton Evening News, December 10, 1893, p. 3. On August 24, 1893, von Höhnel was gored by a rhinoceros in the groin and lower abdomen and was forced to return to Austria. Chanler himself came close to death from malaria before he finally succeeded in reaching Mombasa in February 1894."EXPLORER CHANLER RETREATING.: On His Way Back to the Coast, After Being Deserted," The New York Times, February 6, 1894; p. 5. Out of about five hundred photos taken during the journey, 155 photographs taken by von Höhnel have survived.The "Rokeby Papers" include photos from the Chanler-Höhnel Expedition and are in a private collection in Red Hook, NY. See Kotrba, 2008.
As part of the scientific contribution of the journey, Chanler collected numerous specimens of plants, animals and insects, including several new species of butterflies (Charaxes chanleri, Planema chanleri, Ypthima chanleri, and Cypholoba chanleri) and a small crocodile. Many of the African animals in the American Museum of Natural History were donated by him after being collected on this expedition."Death of Chanler Closes Brilliant Exploring Career," The Washington Post, March 25, 1934; p. B5. Chanler's Falls on the Ewaso Ng'iro River and Chanler's Mountain Reedbuck (Redunca fulvorufula chanleri) were named for him.Maddie DeMott, "William Chanler," Africana, 1967; 3, 1:15-19. In 1896, Chanler published the first ethnographic description of the Cushitic Rendille, a community he would describe as "the most original and interesting of all the strange and different peoples met in East Africa".
In the course of his African explorations Chanler became fluent in the Swahili language.
Although von Höhnel and Chanler remained lifelong friends, von Höhnel considered Chanler to be reckless:
During this expedition, Chanler and von Höhnel explored over of previously unmapped territory, fixed the exact position of Mount Kenya. He was the first White man to view the Nyambeni hills, Chanler's Falls, and the Lorian Swamp, and mapped the course of the Ewaso Ng'iro River. Five specimens donated to the Smithsonian were previously unknown species, including two species of butterflies, two species of reptiles, and Chanler's Mountain Reedbuck.
Political and military career Chanler was a delegate to the Democratic State Convention at Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1896 and in 1897; and was a member of the New York State Assembly (New York County, 5th Assembly District) in 1898."HOME NEWS: Prominent Arrivals at the Hotels," New York Herald, November 11, 1897, p. 12. He worked enthusiastically to pass bills concerning the Sunday closing law for New York City saloons and amending the code regulating prize fights.
A fervent supporter of the Cuban struggle for independence, Chanler wrote to his friend von Höhnel in early 1898:
In February 1898 he took a leave of absence in order to accompany a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the Caribbean together with Emilio Núñez.Joyce Milton, The yellow kids: foreign correspondents in the heyday of yellow journalism, Harper & Row, 1989; pp. 50–51. Among the guns were two M1895 Colt-Browning machine guns that Chanler had donated (Rubens states that they were Maxim-Nordenfelt guns).Horatio Seymour Rubens, Cuba, or, The pursuit of freedom, Ayer Publishing, 1970; , pp. 167–8. After the sinking of the USS Maine, when it appeared certain that war would break out, Chanler offered to resign from the assembly and was granted an indefinite leave of absence."Captain William Astor Chanler: His Active Career as Explorer, Soldier and Politician." New York Tribune, Illustrated Supplement, November 6, 1898, Page 9.