Spencer Trask was an American financier, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. Beginning in the 1870s, Trask began investing and supporting entrepreneurs, including Thomas Edison's commercial production of the electric light bulb and his electricity network. In 1896 he reorganized The New York Times, becoming its majority shareholder and chairman.

Wiawaka is a holiday house for women. It has lake front property on Lake George, New York. It is one of the few remaining fully operational vacation/retreat centers which arose out of the women's rights movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Founded in 1903 by Mary Wiltsie Fuller, Wiawaka provided "affordable vacations" for mainly immigrant female textile workers from Troy and Cohoes, New York, who lacked the economic means to find respite anywhere else.