William M.V. Kingsland, a bon vivant boulevardier of the Upper East Side who died last March, indefatigably researched the genealogies of countless prominent New Yorkers. One of his projects was finding the connections between purchasers of vaults at New York Marble Cemetery and their living descendents.
Since Kingsland's death, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been investigating Kingsland. Artwork found stacked in his apartment after his death turned out to be missing or stolen, including a bust of Giacometti and two paintings from Harvard, one by the famous Colonial portraitist John Singleton Copley.
You can read my earlier articles about Mr. Kingsland at http://tinyurl.com/yl94z3
Yet none of his many friends and acquaintances knew about Kingsland's early years. Now two genealogists, Leslie Corn and Roger Joslyn, have tracked down his background and discovered that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe.
You can read the full story in the New York Sun at http://www.nysun.com/article/45165
