He was born in Southport, Connecticut on March 24, 1802. He was the son of Barnabas Lothrop Sturges and Mary Sturges. His older sister, Mary Ann Sturges, was the wife of William Lockwood and his brother, Lothrop Sturges, was the husband of Jane Freeman Corry. His paternal uncle and grandfather, Lewis Burr Sturges and Jonathan Sturges, were both U.S. Representatives from Connecticut, and his maternal grandparents were Hezekiah Sturges and Abigail Sturges.
Career
Sturges' father had a failed business, so, after receiving a "liberal education", in 1821, Jonathan went to New York City and worked as a clerk in Luman Reed's grocery business at 125 Front Street. Eventually, in 1828, became a one-third partner in the reorganized firm of Reed, Hemstead Sturges, followed by senior partner upon the death of Reed in June 1836. Reed was Sturges' introduction to arts patronage. Sturges retired from "mercantile pursuits" in 1868 and left the business in the hands of Benjamin G. Arnold, the founding president of the Coffee Exchange in the 1880s. With the success of his mercantile business, he moved into other enterprises. He was a founder and director of the Bank of Commerce of New York, a founder and director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a shareholder in the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He helped found the Union League Club of New York and became its second president in 1863.
Arts patronage
Sturges became an important American patron of the arts, acquiring Luman Reed's collection with a group following Reed's death in 1836. He commissioned numerous paintings from American artists, such as Kindred Spirits, a tribute to Thomas Cole by Asher Brown Durand; Durand also made portraits of the Sturges family. The group created the New-York Gallery of Fine Arts for Reed's collection, which eventually went to the New York Historical Society. Sturges patronized other American artists such as Frederic Edwin Church, Henry Inman, William Sidney Mount, John Gadsby Chapman, Henry Kirke Brown, Henry Peters Gray, Charles C. Ingham, and Robert W. Weir. In Henry Tuckerman's 1867 Book of the Artists, Sturges' art collection was included as one of the ten most significant private art collections in New York City.
Henry Cady Sturges, who married Sarah Adams MacWhorter, daughter of George Gray MacWhorter.
Sturges died on November 28, 1874 at his residence, 40 East 36th Street in Manhattan. After a funeral at his residence, and at the Reformed Church at Fifth Avenue and 29th Street, he was buried at Fairfield East Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut. In his will, he appointed his on Frederick and his son-in-law William Osborn as executors and trustees.
