About Gracie Strother & Co. Family Office, Ltd.

HISTORY OF COMPANIES BUILT IN AMERICAS BY ANCESTORS OF STROTHER 

1. New Netherlands Trading Company (1614-1674)

Leiden, Holland, - Beverwyck, New Belgium (Albany, NY)

New World Shipping and Trading, Fur

Cornelius Volkertson Viele

2. Viele Land Company (1638-1899)

New Belgium, New Netherlands, New Amsterdam (New York City) 

Land Accumulation and Grants, Indian Translation, Fur trade, Engineering 

Viele Generations, Arnaut Viele- Egbert Luduvicius Viele, Brigadier General, Union, Built Central Park, NYC

3. Knickerbocker Ice Company (1753-1854)

New Belgium, Schaghticoke, New York State, USA

Ice Harvesting, Refrigeration

Knickerbocker-Viele clan

4. Archibald Gracie & Sons, East India Merchants (1784-1829)

New York City, USA

Cotton, Tea, New York Tontine Coffee house (NYSE), Saturday Evening Post, 

Bank of New York

Archibald Gracie, Sr.

Great Grandson, Col. Archibald Gracie IV was the last survivor of the Titanic.

5. Francis Griffin, Esq.- Bank of New York (1829-1863)

New York City, USA

Bank of New York

Francis Grifffin

6. Rock Island Railroad (Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad) (1852-1904)

Chicago, Midwest and South

Railroad

Charles Keating Tuckerman, first U.S. Ambassador to Greece

son: Fleming Tuckerman

7. Mercantile Trust & Deposit Company (1854-1923)

Baltimore, MD

Banking and Financial Services (Mercantile Bancshares, now PNC)

T. Nelson Strother

8. Polaroid Corporation (1937-2001)

Boston, MA

Instant photography

F.B.Sterling Pile, Sr., IDC.

9. Northrop & Johnson Yachts (1949-1994)

Newport, RI, New York City, Cannes, France

Luxury Yacht Sales and Management

George F. B. Johnson, Jr.

10. Strother Film Partners II (1986-1992)

Beverly Hills, California

Distribution of Motion Picture Film “Big Easy”

Starring Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin (Columbia Pictures)

Richard Strother, Esq.

11. CTC Media (1992 -2006)

Moscow: Anchor Station 

Network: Leningrad, Kiev + 300 Former USSR Cities

First publicly Traded Russian Television Network on NASDAQ

Richard Strother, Esq. (Marathon TV)

12. Kim Kardashian’s Fit In Your Jeans By Friday

Beverly Hills, California

Production and Distribution of Workout DVD Series: Fit In Your Jeans By Friday

Starring: Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Giraldi (Gaiam)

Richard Strother, Esq.

Curriculum Vitae

Richard Strother, Esq.

P.O. Box 161

Palm Beach, FL 33480

561-772-7880

ceo@graciestrother.com

Academic Background

Pomfret School (full scholarship);

Bachelor of Arts-Political Science–UNH-Summa Cum Laude;

Bachelor of Arts (full scholarship)-Psychology–UNH-Magna Cum Laude;

Continuing Education:

Yale Law School J.D., Connecticut -1975-1978

(full scholarship);

Marc Fisher School of Technical Analysis-1989-New York;

Biophysics-Conical Fractals-Moscow- 1993-1994;

FinTech Certification-Oxford U-Said Business School-U.K.;

MBA- Finance/Accounting -Rinker Business School-Florida.

Scholarly Activities

–Magazine articles: Contributing Editor to Palm Beach Journal, 2000-2001.

“The True History of the America’s Cup”; “The Cagey Brits and the Swift Solent sink America’s Hopes”
- Books:1. White Poster Prince-Tales of Brave Ulysses (2020); Library of Congress LCCN: 2022916023 -www.whiteposterprince.com

2. The “Election Deniers” Guidebook To Redemption - Library of Congress LCCN:2023918924l · Dec 24, 2023 -www.captainrickesq.com

-Patents: Bio-Derived Complex For Oil and Gas Well Remediation: US 11,608,463B2

12 Patents Pending, 3 discontinued, including immediate electromagnetic cure for Covid-19.

Work History/ Experience/ Endeavors:

Real Estate/Tax Advantaged: 

1980-1984-Worked on the acquisition of shopping centers, office buildings 

and rental properties. (Richard Roberts Group). 

1984-1985- Developed Condo-Hotel Syndication format involving non-recourse financing for resort hotels. Worked on the Marco Island Hilton syndication, Wilson World, Aspen Club Lodge. (Dowmar Securities, Merrill Lynch).

1985- Palm Court Hotel. Organized the Acquisition and Syndication. Put the Palm Court Hotel on National Register of Historic Places and gave the Mizner Façade to the Palm Beach Historical Society. Palm Beach, FL.(now the Chesterfield Hotel).(Strother Investment Co., Inc.).

Entertainment/ Media/Tax Advantaged:

1986-1990- developed film-financing arbitrage Joint Venture structure to take advantage of the Regan Tax-cuts (50%-35%-25%) involving the current payment of prints and advertising film distribution costs against future recoupment of ancillary rights such as VCR and pay television.

(a) J.V. with Vestron (later Carolco): “Rebel” .(Strother Film Partners I).

(b) J.V. with Kings Road/Columbia: “Big Easy”, “Hoosiers”(Strother Film Partners II). 

 (c) J.V. with Hemdale: “Platoon”, “Hoosiers”. (Strother Film Partners II).

(d) 1989-90: Involved with the unsuccessful attempted takeover of MGM by Giancarlo Paretti through financing provided by client, Australian-based Century Insurance, Ltd. (Strother Investment Co., Inc.).

(e) 1989-90- Involved in the acquisition of discounted bonds in the De Laurentis 

Entertainment Group Bankruptcy proceeding. Involved in reading and valuation of licensing rights and library values. (Strother Investment Co., Inc.).

(f) 1992-2004- Purchased “Marathon TV” in Moscow (Channel 11). Licensed and refitted a 5 kilowatt transmitter on Ostankino Tower, and then sold majority interest in the Moscow Anchor Station to a network of 200+ regional TV stations in the former USSR, of which MGM-UA provided programming. The Anchor Station was renamed “CTC Moscow”, and later merged into CTC Media which went public on NASDAQ in 2006 (under the symbol “CTCM”). (Strother Investment Co., Inc.).

(g) 1992-1994-Unsuccessful in attempts to acquire “Novosti”, the Russian News Network. Worked with former US-Russian Ambassador Paul Nitze and Admiral Zumwalt in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire the exclusive rights to lay fiber-optic cable through the underground power grid of Moscow utility (OAO Unified Energy System of Russia). The rights were later acquired by the U.S.-based Andrews Group. (Strother Investment Co., Inc.).

(i) 2009-2014- Co-produced and was Managing Director of “Kim Kardashian’s Fit In Your Jeans By Friday” DVD workout series. (Individual).

Oil and Gas/Tax Advataged:

NanoTechOil Solutions, LLC-Patented biodegradable upstream Oil well stimulation product in US and 11 major oil producing countries. Biodegradable Oil Spill and Sludge Remediation.

Developed Rollover tax deferred Carried Operating Working Interest in Biodegradable Stimulations of Oil Wells.

Finance/ Stocks/ Commodities/Options/Venture Capital

1986-1990- Member of the New York Futures Exchange at 5 World Trade Center. Trading currency, commodity and stock index futures and options. (Individual).

2004-2026- Flashscat Ventures, LLC.-Consultant/Investor to numerous microcaps or startups in technology, bioscience, web-based applications, pharmacology, electrical transmission, oil and gas (Iraq, USA, Venezuela, Peru) and bandwidth engine microprocessors. (Individual).

2019-2025/International Law Offices of Richard Strother,Esq: Foreign Grantor Dynasty Trusts.

2016-Current: CEO: Gracie Strother & Co. Family Offices, Ltd. (Dynasty Trust Wealth Management). www.graciestrother.com

Associations/Admissions

Connecticut Bar Association

United States Tax Court 

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

Foreign Language Abilities/Skills

English, French, Latin (Read Only).

References: Dr. Robert Cucin, M.D., J.D.,MBA (CEO Biosculpture Technologies, Inc.); Robert W. Corby (ret: Corby Securities, Inc.).

Archibald Gracie IV was portrayed by actor Bernar+d Fox in the 1997 film“Fortuyn”, to make landfall, North America -1613, founder of New Beverwijck, Novi Belgii.

2. Arnaut Viele, Sr. & Sons: Sr. married into the Mohawk tribe. Official Translators for treaty alliance of the English Forces with the Iroquois Confederacy in the French Indian Wars of 1754-1763.

3. Colonel Johannes Knickerbocker II, commander, 14th Albany County Militia regiment, wounded, Battle of Saratoga, 1777.

4. Major General Philip J. Schuyler, Continental Army, U.S. Senator.

5. Brigadier General Oliver Wolcott, Sr., Continental Army, signed the Declaration of Independence.

6. Oliver Wolcott Jr., 2nd United States Secretary of the Treasury.

7. Archibald Gracie the 1st, New York City Shipping Merchant, built Gracie Mansion, Founder of N.Y. Tontine Coffee House (now NYSE), Saturday Evening Post (now NY Post), edited Federalist # 78 with business partner, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, the 1st United States Secretary of the Treasury. Friend of Founding Father John Jay, 1st Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Life long friend of John Jacob Astor, wealthiest man in the United States in 1800. 

8. Francis Griffin, first Yale Law School graduate, founder, director, Bank of New York.

9. Colonel George L. Schuyler, (Union), co-founder, New York Yacht Club, syndicate member of “America”, America’s Cup 1851, Ilse of Wight.

10. Brigadier General Egbert Ludovicus Vielé, West Point 1847, Mexican-American War, Military Governor of Norfolk, Va., Civil War, wrote “Hand-Book for Active Service” in 1862, still used today at West Point; The Topography and Hydrology of New York.in 1865, still used by NYC developers. Built Central Park in NYC and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Served in the U.S. Congress, died on April 22, 1902. His Egyptian Pyramid Tomb is a landmark at West Point. 

11. Teresa Griffin Vielé, (Viele-Griffin) New York City, theologian, writer, carried the Qu’ran from West Point to Havana, Cuba to Brownsville, Texas, into Comanche Country, up the Mississippi through Lake Erie. In 1858 she published "Following the Drum": A Glimpse of Frontier Life, (Pre-Civil War Texas). She converted to Islam and published “Islam in America” and lectured at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, preceding the first wave of Islam migration into the US in 1896. She was awarded in Istanbul the medal of the Mujāhida, the highest the  honor in Islam by the last Supreme Ruler of Islam, Abdul Hamid II. She died in Paris in 1906.

12. Brigadier General Archibald Gracie III, West Point, (CSA), Battle of Chickamauga, 1863, died, Siege of St. Petersburg, 1864.

13. Lieutenant Colonel David Hunter Strother, Virginia Military Academy, Army of the Potomac, Battle of Gettysburg.

14. Francis Vielé-Griffin, Professor of Law, Sorbonne, and a Symbolist Poet, papers at Princeton University.  He was elected to the Acadamie Royale de langue et de Litterature Francaise in Brussels. Died in Bergerac, France.

15. T. Nelson Strother, founder, Mercantile Safe Deposit & Trust Company, Baltimore, Maryland (now PNC).

16. Charles Keating Tuckerman- Harvard Law, first U.S. Ambassador to Greece to the Court of King George and Queen Olga, parents of King Constantine the 1st in 1867. Papers at Princeton University Firestone Library.

17. Edward Tuckerman, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Law School, , Professor of Botany, Discoverer of Tuckerman’s Ravine, Mt. Washington, and Lichen, the 1st life form specie that was neither fauna or flora. Founder, Natural History Society of Boston.

18. Caroline Schermerhorn (Astor), founder of Astor’s Four Hundred.

19. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. 26th U.S. President, direct from Marie De Trieux, collaterally through Schuylers,

20. Archibald Gracie IV, last survivor of the Titanic, wrote “Titanic, A Survivor’s Story”. He was washed overboard with close friend John Jacob Astor IV, after saving Astor’s wife.

19. Fleming Tuckerman, Rock Island Railroad, Harvard Law, Author of “War Poems in French and English”.

20. Nancy Astor, or Viscomtess Lady Astor, the first woman to be elected Member of the English Parliament in 1919.

21. F. Burchill Sterling Pile Sr., co-founder of Polaroid Corporation, 1938.

22. Arthur Tuckerman, Oxford Law School, author, Look Magazine, wrote “When Rochambeau Stepped Ashore”. US. Naval Intelligence, WWII.

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Gracie Mansion, New York City

Gracie Mansion contains the Fireplace where Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, Archibald Gracie the First’s Business Partner,  died after a fatal pistol duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.

In the War of 1812, Gracie built a private battery of cannons on an embankment on the East River to deter enemy British ships. Private cannons are probably no longer allowed in N.Y.C.

Archibald Gracie the 1st, Founder of N.Y. Tontine Coffee House (now NYSE), Saturday Evening Post (now NY Post), edited Federalist # 78 with business partner, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, the 1st United States Secretary of the Treasury. Second Richest Man in USA after best life long friend: John Jacob Astor.

Oliver Wolcott Sr. was an American Founding Father. He  signed of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation as the 19th Governor of Connecticut.

Wolcott Sr. was appointed Brigadier General of the Continental Army in August 1776 with command of 14 Connecticut Militia Regiments and fought at the Battle of Brooklyn and the Battle of Saratoga.

Oliver Wolcott’s Sr.’s son, Oliver Wolcott, Jr. was a member of the militia during The War of Independence. He was admitted to the Connecticut bar.

He was appointed by President George Washington to succeed Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury in early 1795.  He held that position until the end of John Adam's Administration. He was elected Governor of Connecticut for 10 years (1817-1827)

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The schooner America, and  co-owner George Schulyer, overwhelmingly wins the Isle of Wight Race, August, 1851, and dips its ensign three times in salute to the Royal Yacht Albert and Victoria. Queen Victoria asked who was in second place. The reply — “there is no second” — has since become a symbol the America's Cup trophy and the pursuit of excellence, and began a new respect from a former enemy.

Young General Egbert L. Viele, President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of Treasury Chase and Secretary of War Stanton clandestinely plan the Invasion of Norfolk, VA aboard the Treasury Cutter “Miami” in early May, 1862 enroute to Hamptons Roads, VA. .

A Trip With Lincoln, Chase And Stanton

By Viele, Egbert L.

Scribner's Monthly, v. 16, no. 5, Sept. 1878

President Abraham Lincoln and company disembark the "Miami" to personally scout the beach head at Sewall's Point prior to the troop landing and invasion.

The capture of Norfolk and its shipyards and access to the open sea would deal a crushing blow to Confederate General Lee, who would have to retreat to Richmond. 

Norfolk falls. The CSS Virginia (Merrimack) is scuttled on May 11,1862. 

The pivitol Battle of Hampton Roads received worldwide attention. The preeminent naval powers halted further construction of wooden-hulled ships. 

A new age of naval warfare had arrived. A new warship using a small number of very heavy guns, mounted on turrets so that they could fire in all directions, like the Monitor.

Viele was born in Waterford, New York, son of Kathlyne Schuyler (Knickerbocker) and State Senator John L. Viele. After graduation from the U.S.M.C.,West Point in 1847, he served in the Mexican American War, and on the Texas Frontier bordering Comanche Country.

He was appointed Military Governor of Norfolk, Virginia, in May, 1862. 

From 1883-84, Viele was the Commissioner of Parks for New York City.

The "Viele Map", formally called the "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", developed by Viele in 1865, shows his survey of the original streams, marshes and coastline of New York City, superimposed over the street grid. The Map is still used by modern geotechnical engineers, structural engineers and planners to design foundations of new buildings and structures in NYC.

Viele died on April 22, 1902 in New York City. He and his second wife are entombed in a pyramid-shaped mausoleum, guarded by a pair of sphinxes, in the Post Cemetery at West Point, New York. 

The inscriptions are in Etruscan, a language that preceded Latin and was taught then. 

General Viele had a buzzer installed in his sarcophagus electrically wired to the caretaker's cottage so as to provide rescue if Viele ever came back from the afterlife. 

His Handbook for Active Service is still used today at West Point

· Hand-book for active service; containing practical instructions in campaign duties. For the use of volunteers. (1861) New York: D. Van Nostrand. 

Teresa Griffin Viéle was born in 1831 to and Mary (Sands) and Francis Griffin, a prominent New York City lawyer.

Teresa loved literature and poetry. When formal study of Islam became curricula of Protestant institutions like Union Theological Seminary in the 1830s, she loved the poetry within the versus of the Qu’ran. She would become a huge proponent of Islam In America in 1893.

In 1850, Teresa married Lt. Egbert Viéle. Deployed to the Texas Frontier, she took her Qu’ran on a journey to Havana, Cuba, Brownsville Texas, through Comanche country up the Mississippi River, and up through Lake Erie to New York. 

In her book: Following the Drum: A Glimpse of Frontier Life. She rode her black stallion into the desert and read the soothing versus of the Qu’ran under a shaded tree,

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Teresa moved to Paris, France in 1872 and wrote extensively for Muhammad Webb’s The Muslim World and Voice of Islam and for Quilliam’s The Crescent, under the Muslim pen name Sadika Hanoun, earning her title of “Representative of the Ottoman Empire from France”. She was awarded in Istanbul the medal of the Mujāhida, the highest the  honor in Islam by the last Supreme Ruler of Islam, Abdul Hamid II

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Charles Keating Tuckerman- Harvard, first U.S. Ambassador to Greece to the Court of King George and Queen Olga, parents of King Constantine the 1st in 1867, during the Andrew Johnson Administration. His Papers are at Princeton University's Firestone Library.

Archibald Gracie IV, was the last man to  survive the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. After helping the pregnant wife of his family’s 4th generation friend, John Jacob Astor IV, into a lifeboat, Gracie was swept from Astor into the icy water. He managed to swim to the surface and survive by clinging to an overturned collapsible lifeboat until they were rescued by the RMS Carpathia. 

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Archibald Gracie IV later wrote a highly detailed, first-hand account of the disaster Titanic: A Survivor's Story. Gracie explicitly documented a minute by minute timeline of that disaster and testified before Congress.

Heavily traumatized by the extreme exposure, he died less than eight months after the disaster . 

Archibald Gracie IV was portrayed by actor Bernard Fox in the 1997 film Titanic. 

February 19, 1945: Third Wave of U.S. Marines approach the beaches of Iwo Jima. My father's fellow Marines and his entire generation, like generations before them, fought bravely and selflessly to protect our shores from foreign invaders. To keep our dearly  earned freedoms and our private property. Why should we give away what their blood, sweat and tears earned to any alien who just wanders in?