Part 9/13:
William’s personal life was marked by significant milestones and challenges. In 1899, at age 20, he married Virginia Graham Fair, a wealthy heiress from San Francisco’s mining elite. Their marriage lasted nearly three decades before ending in divorce in 1927 amid growing personal and marital tensions.
That same year, William remarried Rosamond Lancaster Woburn, a Philadelphia socialite and heiress, in a simple civil ceremony in Paris. The couple’s happiness was overshadowed by tragedy when their only son, William III, died young in a car accident in 1933—an irony given William’s lifelong passion for automobiles.