John Augustus Balestier (Sept. 7, 1842—Sept. 5, 1912) was a charter member of The Lambs in 1877 and on the Club’s papers of incorporation. He was an attorney and a non-professional member.
Balestier descended from a large New York family. His paternal grandfather, whose ancestors were from Martinique, was a founder of the Century Association; his maternal grandfather was Erasmus Peshine Smith, who with Commodore Perry completed commercial negotiations with Japan.
He graduated from Phillips Exeter in 1859 and Harvard in 1863. Balestier had a law practice in lower Manhattan. Part of his career was managing the legal affairs of actors and actresses, including the popular star Kate Claxton in the 1870s.
In the 1890s he was vice president of the West Virginia Coal, Iron, and Lumber Co.
In 1868 he married Emily Elliot. In 1871 they had one child, Edmund Elliot Balestier. His wife died in 1888 and Balestier remarried the next year to a widow, Lillian C. Langley.
His niece, Caroline Balestier, wed Rudyard Kipling in 1892. His younger brother, author Wolcott Balestier (1861-1891), had been a partner and collaborator with the famous writer.
In his sixties his memory began to fade and he suffered from what was possibly dementia. His son had him declared insane and committed to the New York City Farm Colony, a poorhouse on Staten Island for the poor and insane.
John Augustus Balestier died on September 5, 1912, two days short of his 70th birthday. He is interred in the family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, Section 20, Grave 9329.
Research by Lamb Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, Club Historian.