Samuel Ward McAllister was the son of Louisa Charlotte (Cutler) and Matthew Hall McAllister. He was born on December 1827 in Savannah, Georgia. His father, at one time an officer of the Georgia Hussars and, afterward, a leader of the Savannah bar and federal circuit judge in California, was famous for his hospitality and entertained many of the reigning wits and beauties of his day.
When Ward, as he was usually called, was about twenty he visited New York, where he spent some time under the social patronage of a maiden relative, who introduced him into the fashionable circles of the city. After her death, he returned to Savannah and passed his bar examination.
In 1850 McAllister and his father joined his brother, Hall McAllister, at San Francisco in order to establish a law firm. By 1852 he had made a comfortable fortune and in the autumn of that year returned to New York. He bought "Bayside Farm, " near Newport, R. I, and began his career as a society man. He initiated his campaign with several years' residence abroad, where he everywhere managed to form distinguished social connections and perfected himself in the arts of the finished host. On his return to the United States, he spent his winters in New York and Savannah but made Newport his home for nine months of the year. Always restless and feverishly active, he began at once to convert the sleepy old town of Newport into the gilt-edged, multi-colored scene he loved. The modest country picnic under his practised hand became a fête champêtre with music, floral decorations, dancing, banqueting, and exquisitely iced champagne. Beginning thus with successes at Newport he had, by the late sixties, made himself the arbiter of the New York social world and, as such, maintained his position with a diplomatic skill worthy of a higher aim. Yet, in his own belief, a social career was an end sufficient in itself because Society, as he saw it, tended to elevate and refine life and to stimulate all the higher arts that satisfy esthetic wants. His chief triumphs in the New York social world were the organization of the "Patriarchs" and the choosing of the "Four Hundred. " As a protest against the powers of exclusion held by a few very rich men, in 1872, he banded together the oldest New York families, whose approval of any social aspirant should be final. The heads of the families so honored were called "Patriarchs, " and they gave subscription balls for which regular invitations became a warranty of social position. The "Four Hundred" was a group of more casual origin. Mrs. William Astor, in planning her ball of February 1, 1892, found that the ballroom would not accommodate all those upon her list. He undertook to cut the list and afterward boasted in the Union Club that there were "only about four hundred people in New York Society. " The phrase was given publicity and the whirlwind of controversy that followed made it an idiom of the language. In 1890 he brought out his book, Society as I Have Found It, a curious mélange of reminiscence, good dining, servant management, and social etiquette and diplomacy.
McAllister's many vanities and affectations laid him open, at times, to extravagant ridicule. Yet even those whom his militant individualism annoyed acknowledged his charm of manner and his amiability and freedom from malice, throughout a life devoted to maintaining the balance of his little throne in a glittering world that "smiles and smiling kills. "
In 1853 McAllister married Sarah T. Gibbons, the daughter of a Georgia millionaire then living in Madison, N. J. They had one daughter and two sons.
26 November 1800 - 19 December 1865 Was an American attorney, politician, and judge.
13 March 1801 - 13 February 1869
9 February 1826 - 1 December 1888
29 October 1823 - 3 January 1887
_____ - October 1909
11 May 1854 - 20 October 1923
1859 – 1925
27 July 1855 - 31 March 1908
