MIAMI -- International Harvester heiress Barbara Deering Danielson has died following a lengthy illness. She was 93.
The daughter and niece of International Harvester co-founders Charles and James Deering, Mrs. Danielson died Saturday at a nursing center, three weeks before her 94th birthday.
Mrs. Danielson was the widow of Richard Danielson, editor and publisher of Atlantic Monthly who died in 1957.
In 1925, Mrs. Danielson and her sister, Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, inherited what later became one of south Florida's most splendid cultural attractions, the garden and mansion of Vizcaya. The Italian Renaissance villa, which is now a museum, was built in 1916.
At the time of James Deering's death in 1925, Vizcaya was valued at $17 million, but Deering's two daughters sold the estate to Dade County in 1957 for $1.5 million.
Mrs. Danielson was an avid fox hunting fan, and was joint-master of the Foxhounds of the Groton Hunt Club in Groton, Mass., from 1934 until World War II.
She was a lifetime trustee of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and its Museum of Science. Mrs. Danielson also served as a trustee for the Perkins School for the blind in Watertown, Mass., and was a longtime member of the corporation of Massachusetts General Hospital and founder of Nashoba Community Hospital in Ayer, Mass.
She is survived by three children, James Deering Danielson of Gainesville, Fla.; Richard E. Danielson Jr. of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Marion Campbell of New York.
Memorial services were scheduled Tuesday at the Van Orsdel Chapel in Coral Gables, Fla.
