Frelinghuysen was born in Newark, New Jersey on April 17, 1860. He was the youngest of six children born to Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen and Matilda Elizabeth Griswold. His father was a lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator and later as Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur. His siblings included: Matilda Griswold Frelinghuysen, who married Henry Winthrop Gray, a prominent merchant; Charlotte Louisa Frelinghuysen; Frederick Frelinghuysen, who married Estelle B. Kinney; George Griswold Frelinghuysen, who married Sara Linen Ballantine, granddaughter of Peter Ballantine; and Sarah Helen Frelinghuysen, who married Judge John Davis, and after his death, Brig. Gen. Charles Laurie McCawley. His paternal grandparents were Frederick Frelinghuysen and Mary Frelinghuysen. His grandfather died when his father was just three years old, so his father was adopted by his uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen. Both grandfather and adopted grandfather were sons of Frederick Frelinghuysen, the eminent lawyer who was one of the framers of the first New Jersey Constitution, a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, a member of the Continental Congress, and a member of the United States Senate. His maternal grandfather George Griswold, was a merchant in New York City who "made an immense fortune in the time of the clipper trade with China."
Career
Frelinghuysen was the Treasurer of the J. & P. Coats Ltd., a large British thread company that was run by his father-in-law Sir James Coats and located at 347 Broadway in New York City. Upon his marriage in 1885 to Alice Coats, his mother and father-in-law wanted him to be brought into Auchincloss Brothers as an equal partner. The American firm was run by the younger brothers of Alice's mother, John Winthrop Auchincloss and Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Sr.. When they said no, their refusal ended the Auchincloss relationship with the Coats firm and nearly bankrupt John. In 1906, he became a director as well as financier of the Brunswick Refrigeration Co., a consolidation of the New Brunswick Refrigeration Company and Union Refrigeration Company which had merged. The other directors included W. Campbell Clark, head of Clark Thread Company and A. M. Coats, president of the Coats Thread Company. Frelinghuysen retired from business in 1910.
Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, who married Mai Duncan Watson in 1914. After their divorce, he married Katherine Fisk, the widow of Charles W. Fisk, in 1927.
After Alice's death in 1889, he married Elizabeth Mary "Lily" Cannon, the widow of Henry Le Grand Cannon, on June 2, 1898 at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City by Bishop Henry C. Potter. At the wedding, his ushers were R. Livingston Beeckman and William Cutting Jr. and his best-man was Elisha Dyer Jr. Lily was a daughter of William G. Thompson and descendant of Elijah Brush, both Mayors of Detroit and had two children, a boy and girl, from her first marriage. After their marriage, they lived at her home, 60 Fifth Avenue and maintained a winter residence in Palm Beach, Florida known as "Southways," and another house at Tuxedo Park, New York. Frelinghuysen died of heart disease on January 30, 1928 at his residence, 66 East 55th Street in Manhattan. Previous to East 55th Street, he had been living at the Hotel Plaza in New York. His widow lived at their Palm Beach home until her death in 1967, at the age of 97, when she was referred to as "a grand dame of a bygone era."
Descendants
Through his son Frederick, he was the step-grandfather of Lilla Fisk, who married Harry Payne Bingham Jr. and George C. Rand in 1956; and Felicia Fisk, who married Albert B. Dewey, the brother of U.S. Representative Charles S. Dewey.
