She was the daughter of Sarah Attwood Meert and the General William Henry Anthon,[3] a successful lawyer and Staten Island assemblyman.

[7] Fish ruled as one of the so-called Triumvirate of American Gilded Age society, known as the "Four Hundred", along with Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs.

Grandees attending her dinner parties would be greeted with the occasional insult, "Make yourself perfectly at home, and believe me, there is no one who wishes you there more heartily than I do."

A widely repeated story says that one was given in honor of "Prince Del Drago of Corsica", who turned out to be a well-dressed monkey introduced by Joseph Leiter.

"[14] On June 1, 1876, Mamie married Stuyvesant Fish, the director of the National Park Bank of New York City and president of the Illinois Central Railroad.