Frederick Scott Wait (May 15, 1851 - June 30, 1910) was an American legal scholar, author, and prominent New York attorney.Queer Places:
Fresh Pond Crematory and Columbarium, 61-40 Mt Olivet Crescent, Middle Village, NY 11379, United States
Frederick Scott Wait (May 15, 1851 - June 30, 1910) was an American legal scholar, author, and prominent New York attorney.
Born in Coldenham, New York, to John Wait and Mary Scott, Wait established himself as a prominent legal writer and practicing lawyer in New York. He authored standard legal treatises during the late 19th century, including A Treatise on Fraudulent Conveyances and Creditors' Bills (1884) and works co-authored on corporate and trust law.
He married Mary Goodrich Monell, daughter of John James Monell and Mary Elizabeth Smith, on December 15, 1900 at New York
He passed away around July 1, 1910, at the age of 59 in Westhampton Beach, New York.
The Horace Walpole Society—an exclusive American organization founded in 1910 for collectors, connoisseurs, and scholars of American decorative arts, architecture, and history—elected Frederick Scott Wait to its membership in 1910.
Because Wait passed away shortly after the society's founding, his brief tenure is noted in historical rosters as "elected 1910 / died 1910". The society itself was named in honor of Horace Walpole, the 18th-century art collector, writer, and builder of Strawberry Hill.
While direct archival documentation regarding Frederick Scott Wait's personal romantic life remains limited in standard public records, his social and intellectual alignment with the Walpole Society links him to broader LGBTQ+ cultural history. The namesake of the society, Horace Walpole, is widely recognized by modern scholars for his same-sex attachments and queer aesthetic sensibilities in 18th-century art and literature.
Organizations formed around connoisseurship, art collecting, and antiquarianism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries frequently served as key social networks for gay, bisexual, and bachelor collectors of the era.
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