Gardner (Isabella Stewart) is born in New York City.

The daughter of a wealthy businessman, she marries Jack Gardner and moves to Boston in 1860,* and becomes one of Boston’s most colorful and well-known residents. Of her, Henry James once declares, “She is not a woman, she is a locomotive – with a Pullman car attached.” After the death of her two-year-old son in 1865 and the subsequent death of her father, she becomes a patron of the arts, and a notable collector. After her husband’s death in 1898, she builds a new home to house her art collection in 1903.* Mrs. Gardner dies on July 17, 1924, and, after a funeral at the Church of the Advent, is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.