 1896 - 1948 (52 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has 33 ancestors and one descendant in this family tree.
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| Name |
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald |
| Birth |
24 Sep 1896 |
Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, United States  |
| Gender |
Male |
| FamilySearch ID |
28YV-75K |
| Death |
21 Dec 1948 |
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Burial |
St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Rockville, Montgomery, Maryland, United States |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I100451 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
Edward Fitzgerald, b. 13 Apr 1853, Rockville, Montgomery, Maryland, United States d. 26 Jan 1931, Washington, District of Columbia, United States (Age 77 years) |
| Mother |
Mary McQuillan, b. 8 Aug 1859, Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, United States d. 2 Sep 1936, Washington, District of Columbia, United States (Age 77 years) |
| Marriage |
12 Feb 1890 |
Washington, District of Columbia, United States |
| Family ID |
F31527 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family |
Zelda Sayre, b. 24 Jul 1900, Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama, United States d. 10 Mar 1948, Asheville, Buncombe, North Carolina, United States (Age 47 years) |
| Marriage |
3 Apr 1920 |
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, New York, New York, United States |
| Children |
| | 1. Francis Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, b. 26 Oct 1921, Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, United States d. 18 Jun 1986, Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama, United States (Age 64 years) |
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| Family ID |
F31529 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
5 May 2024 |
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| Event Map |
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 | Birth - 24 Sep 1896 - Saint Paul, Ramsey, Minnesota, United States |
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 | Marriage - 3 Apr 1920 - St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, New York, New York, United States |
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 | Death - 21 Dec 1948 - Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
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 | Burial - - St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Rockville, Montgomery, Maryland, United States |
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| Notes |
- He was an American fiction writer, whose works helped to illustrate th e f lamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. While he achieved popular succ ess , fame, and fortune in his lifetime, he did not receive much critica l acc laim until after his death. Perhaps the most notable member of th e "Los t Generation" of the 1920s, Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as o ne of t he greatest American writers of the 20th century. He finished fou r novels : This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gat sby, an d Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon , was pu blished posthumously. Four collections of his short stories wer e publishe d, as well as 164 short stories in magazines during his lifeti me.
Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family , F itzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times remov ed o n his father's side, Francis Scott Key, but was always known as Scot t Fit zgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scot t Fitzge rald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Wel l, thre e months before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother los t her ot her two children... I think I started then to be a writer."
His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was of Irish and English ancestry, and h a d moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the American Civil War, and wa s d escribed as "a quiet gentlemanly man with beautiful Southern manners" . Hi s mother was Mary "Molly" McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an I ris h immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery busines s. E dward Fitzgerald's first cousin once removed Mary Surratt was hange d in 1 865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
Scott Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in Bu f falo, New York, occasionally in West Virginia (1898–1901 and 1903–1908 ) w here his father worked for Procter & Gamble, with a short interlude i n Sy racuse, New York, (between January 1901 and September 1903). Edwar d Fitzg erald had earlier worked as a wicker furniture salesman; he joine d Procte r & Gamble when the business failed. His parents, both Catholic , sent Fit zgerald to two Catholic schools on the West Side of Buffalo, f irst Holy A ngels Convent (1903–1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academ y (1905–1908 ). His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy o f unusual int elligence with a keen early interest in literature. His dot ing mother ens ured that her son had all the advantages of an upper-middl e-class upbring ing. Her inheritance and donations from an aunt allowed t he family to liv e a comfortable lifestyle. In a rather unconventional st yle of parenting , Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arra ngement that he g o for only half a day—and was allowed to choose which h alf.
In 1908, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family retu r ned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Pa u l from 1908 to 1911. When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writin g ap pear in print—a detective story published in the school newspaper. I n 191 1, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Ne wman S chool, a prestigious Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jerse y. Fitz gerald played on the 1912 Newman football team. At Newman, he me t Fathe r Sigourney Fay, who noticed his incipient talent with the writte n word a nd encouraged him to pursue his literary ambitions.
After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to s t ay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton Univ er sity. He tried out for the college football team, but was cut the firs t d ay of practice. He firmly dedicated himself at Princeton to honing hi s cr aft as a writer, and became friends with future critics and writer s Edmun d Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He wrote for the Princeton Triang le Club , the Nassau Lit, and the Princeton Tiger. He also was involved i n the Am erican Whig-Cliosophic Society, which ran the Nassau Lit. His ab sorptio n in the Triangle—a kind of musical-comedy society—led to his sub missio n of a novel to Charles Scribner's Sons where the editor praised t he writ ing but ultimately rejected the book. Four of the University's ea ting clu bs sent him bids at midyear, and he chose the University Cottag e Club (wh ere Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials are still displaye d in its li brary) known as "the 'Big Four' club that was most committe d to the idea l of the fashionable gentleman".
Fitzgerald's writing pursuits at Princeton came at the expense of his co u rsework, however, causing him to be placed on academic probation, an d i n 1917 he dropped out of university to join the Army. During the wint er o f 1917, Fitzgerald was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and was a stude nt o f future United States President and General of the Army Dwight Eise nhowe r whom he intensely disliked. Worried that he might die in the Wa r with h is literary dreams unfulfilled, Fitzgerald hastily wrote The Rom antic Ego tist in the weeks before reporting for duty—and, although Scrib ners rejec ted it, the reviewer noted his novel's originality and encoura ged Fitzger ald to submit more work in the future.
It was while attending Princeton that Fitzgerald met Chicago socialite a n d debutante Ginevra King on a visit back home in St. Paul. King and Fit zg erald had a romantic relationship from 1915 to 1917. Immediately infat uat ed with her, according to Mizner, Fitzgerald "remained devoted to Gin evr a as long as she would allow him to", and wrote to her "daily the inc oher ent, expressive letters all young lovers write". She would become hi s ins piration for the character of Isabelle Borgé, Amory Blaine's firs t love i n This Side of Paradise, for Daisy in The Great Gatsby, and seve ral othe r characters in his novels and short stories. After their relati onship en ded in 1917 Fitzgerald had requested that Ginevra destroy the l etters tha t he had written to her. He never destroyed the letters that K ing had sen t him. After he had passed in 1940 his daughter "Scottie" sen t the letter s back to King where she kept them until her death. She neve r shared th e letters with anyone.
Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 192 0 s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking which would undermine his heal t h by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Fi tz gerald claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but Milford dismis se s it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems; however, Fitzgeral d sch olar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact hav e recurr ing tuberculosis, and according to Milford, Fitzgerald biographe r Arthu r Mizener said that Fitzgerald suffered a mild attack of tubercul osis i n 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrh age". S ome have said that the writer's hemorrhage was caused by bleedin g from es ophageal varices.
Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in the late 1930s. After the firs t , in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuo u s exertion. He moved in with the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, who l iv ed in Hollywood on North Hayworth Avenue, one block east of Fitzgerald ' s apartment on North Laurel Avenue. Fitzgerald had two flights of stai r s to climb to his apartment; Graham's was on the ground floor. On the n ig ht of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere o f T his Thing Called Love starring Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas. A s th e two were leaving the Pantages Theater, Fitzgerald experienced a di zzy s pell and had trouble walking; upset, he said to Graham, "They thin k I a m drunk, don't they?"
The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and made notes in his n e wly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Graham saw him jump from his armch ai r, grab the mantelpiece, gasp, and fall to the floor. She ran to the m ana ger of the building, Harry Culver, founder of Culver City. Upon enter in g the apartment to assist Fitzgerald, he stated, "I'm afraid he's dead . " Fitzgerald had died of a heart attack at the age of 44. Dr. Clarenc e H . Nelson, Fitzgerald's physician, signed the death certificate. Fitzg eral d's body was moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.
Among the attendees at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy P a rker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch", a li n e from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. His bod y wa s transported to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by twent y or th irty people in Bethesda; among the attendees were his only child , France s "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith (then aged 19), and his edi tor, Maxw ell Perkins.
At the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Church denied the family' s r equest that Fitzgerald, a non-practicing Catholic, be buried in the f amil y plot in the Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland . Fitz gerald was instead buried at Rockville Union Cemetery. When Zeld a Fitzger ald died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital i n Asheville , North Carolina, she was originally buried next to him at Ro ckville Unio n. Only one photograph of the original gravesite is known t o exist. It wa s taken in 1970 by Fitzgerald scholar Richard Anderson an d was first publ ished as part of an essay by fellow-scholar Bryant Mangu m, "An Affair o f Youth: in search of flappers, belles, and the first gra ve of the Fitzge ralds", in Broad Street Magazine in 2016. In 1975, thei r daughter Scotti e successfully petitioned to have the earlier decisio n revisited and he r parents' remains were moved to the family plot in Sa int Mary's.
Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Last Tycoon. His manuscrip t , which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel' s st ory, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, an d pub lished in 1941 as The Last Tycoon.
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Has 33 ancestors and one descendant in this family tree.
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