The Leishman Family
The Leishman family is one of the lesser known families in our profiles. Originally of Scottish ancestry, members of the Leishman family migrated to America in the late 1600s, one member of the family possibly sailing on the Mayflower.The grand matriarch of the Leishman family was the American heiress Nancy Louise Leishman, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1894. She was the youngest of three children born to John George Alexander Leishman(1857–1924), the President of Carnegie Steel who later served as the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland, Turkey, Italy, and Germany during the administrations of U.S. Presidents William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Her mother was Julia Crawford (1864–1918).Nancy’s sister, Marthe Leishman, a favorite of King George V and a close friend of Cole Porter and Francis Poulenc, married into European aristocracy. Her first husband was Count Louis de Gontaut-Biron and, after his death, she married the American heir James Hazen Hyde.Nancy’s brother, John Leishman Jr., married, and divorced, New York socialite Elizabeth Helene Demarest.At least one of Nancy’s children married into the Danish Royal family. She died at the age of 88 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1983.There are modern-day descendants of the Leishman family scattered throughout Europe and America.Many of the modern-day descendants occupy positions in government and financial markets, with family interests extending into single-family real estate investment holdings. The true scale of their wealth remains difficult to assess, as assets are largely obscured by trust structures, but the generational accumulation of capital dating back to the 1800s is believed to be considerable.