The publication of T.C. Boyle’s novel Riven Rock in 1998 heightened interest in Stanley and Katharine McCormick. Riven Rock was the name of the couple’s 87-acre Montecito estate located in the area of the confluence of Cold Springs and Hot Springs creeks. For some 40 years, Stanley McCormick was confined here due to debilitating mental illness.
Stanley, born in 1874, was the youngest child of Cyrus and Nettie McCormick. The elder McCormick had amassed a large fortune due to his invention of the grain reaper and the founding of the family firm which eventually became International Harvester. Stanley was educated by the finest private tutors and preparatory schools before graduating with honors from Princeton in 1895. He then traveled in Europe with his widowed mother (Cyrus died in 1884) and studied art in Paris. He returned to the U.S. to take up a position in the family business.
In 1904, Stanley married Katharine Dexter. She had earned a degree in biology at MIT, the second woman to graduate from that institution. Within the next few years, Stanley would evidence increasingly severe symptoms of schizophrenia, and by 1908 he needed constant care. The family brought Stanley west and ensconced him at Riven Rock, recently vacated by Stanley’s sister Mary Virginia, who also suffered from mental illness.