For Abram Hewitt's wife, Sarah, wealth meant ordering her wardrobe from a dressmaker in Paris. At least once, the result was disappointment, and her husband drafted a letter to say that "Mrs. Hewitt's black silk dress lacks the waist, so that she cannot wear it at all. Such carelessness is very stupid."

The Hewitt daughters, Amy, Eleanor, and Sarah, were well traveled and active in the creation of a "high culture" of art and music in New York. Their collections formed the foundations of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in 1897.