[1] In 1874, Gerry took up the case of Mary Ellen McCormack, who had been abused by her foster parents, which he eventually argued before the Supreme Court of New York.

Some criticized their activities as interfering with family life, or for imposing aristocratic white Protestant values upon immigrants, many of whom were Catholic or black.

[8] The U.S. Supreme Court, in the widely reviled 1918 case Hammer v. Dagenhart, found the new federal child protection law, the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, in a case now known for its dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.[9] Two years later, with Gerry as the organization's legal advisor, SPCCC bought the former House of Mercy for use as a temporary facility to house juveniles awaiting judicial action, since they had previously either been held at stationhouses or jailed with adult prisoners, where they were often victimized.

From 1886 until 1888, Gerry served as chairman of the New York State Commission on Capital Punishment, which replaced hanging with the electric chair.

[14] Together, Elbridge and Louisa had six children: In 1904, the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947) painted Gerry's portrait, which still hangs in the New York Yacht Club.

His family's New York mansion at 2 East 61st Street had long been a center of cultivated and fashionable life, even as it came to be surrounded by skyscrapers.

[1] When he built it, he told architect Richard Morris Hunt specifically about needing to house his collection of 30,000 law books and cost a reported $3,000,000.

His wife's estate in the Catskill Mountains was called "Aknusti", supposedly from an American Indian word meaning "expensive proposition.