William M.V. Kingsland, a prodigious researcher and genealogist, died recently of a heart attack. "He was an unending trove of historic facts of the Upper East Side," as described by longtime friend, Eliot Rowlands.
Kingsland was believed to be 62 when he was found to have passed on March 21. "He was a walking gazetteer," a Landmarks Committee member of Manhattan's Community Board 8, Barry Schneider, said. A co-chair of Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side, Elizabeth Ashby, said, "You couldn't mention an address that he wouldn't have known who had ever lived there and what ever had happened there. Crimes, adultery, elopements, who ran off with the butler, he knew it all."
