Chamberlain met his third wife, Mary Crowninshield Endicott, the 23-year old daughter of United States Secretary of War William Crowninshield Endicott, while leading a British delegation to Washington, D.C. to resolve the Newfoundland fisheries dispute in 1887. He described her as "one of the brightest and most intelligent girls I have yet met." Before he left the United States in March 1888, Chamberlain proposed, and they married at St. John's Episcopal Church in New York City, wearing white violets rather than Chamberlain's trademark orchid. Mary became a faithful supporter of his political ambitions and eased his acceptance into upper-class society in the second half of his career. They had no children.
