Frederic Tudor - Tudor Family and Nahant

Tudor Family and Nahant

The Tudors were a Boston Brahmin family. The Ice King inherited his family's grounds in Nahant, Massachusetts. In 1825, after constructing his summer cottage in the center of town, he began a lifelong campaign to plant trees on treeless Nahant. By 1832 he had 3,358 trees growing in his nursery and within two years he had some 4,000 trees in cultivation, offering them to summer residents for free if they would plant them on their properties. The family grounds are now the Nahant Country Club.

Frederic Tudor was a child of William Tudor (1750—1819), a wealthy lawyer and leading citizen of Boston, and Delia Jarvis Tudor. Frederic's father also served as a Representative of Boston in the Massachusetts General Court (1781—94), State Senator (1801—02), and Secretary of the Commonwealth (1808—09), and was a founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, whose first meeting was held in his house in Boston.

Frederic Tudor's older brother William was a leading citizen of Boston, sometime literary man, and co-founder of the North American Review and the Boston Athenaeum. William Tudor christened Boston "The Athens of America" in an 1819 letter.

Frederic married Euphemia Fenno (April 6, 1814, Mount Upton, New York — March 9, 1884, Newbury, Vermont). Frederic Tudor's oldest son, Frederic (February 11, 1845 — Boston 1902), was an 1867 graduate of Harvard College and a member of one of the first graduating classes at St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire). The Ice King's second son, William, was also a graduate of St. Paul's School.

The younger Frederic was the grandfather of the 20th century watercolorist and book illustrator Tasha Tudor. (Frederic's daughter Rosamond married William Starling Burgess). She was born in Boston in 1915 and named Starling Burgess for her father. She styled herself as Tasha Tudor and published under that name.