| Birth: | Mar. 30, 1902
Portsmouth
Rockingham County
New Hampshire, USA | | Death: | Aug. 13, 2007
Briarcliff Manor
Westchester County
New York, USA | 
Philanthropist. Brooke Astor was born in New Hampshire and raised in Waikiki, Panama, Peking, and Mexico. Her father was John Henry Russell Jr., a military officer who eventually became Commandant of the US Marine Corps. She dropped out of high school in 1919 to marry her first serious boyfriend, J. Dryden Kuser, when she was 17. He was descended from founders of South Jersey Gas and Electric and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, but he drank heavily, beat her, cheated on her, and announced after a year of marriage that he no longer loved her. A dutiful wife, she did not file for divorce until after he won election to the New Jersey State Senate in 1930. Her second marriage was to stockbroker Charles Marshall, a man of more modest means and kinder temperament. During World War II she worked as a nurse tending to veterans, and when the war ended, unlike most married women of her time, she decided to continue to work rather than give up her job to returning soldiers. She wrote for House And Garden magazine, and eventually became an editor there. She was married to Marshall for two decades, until his death. Her third husband was Vincent Astor, who inherited great wealth when his father died aboard the Titanic in 1912. Astor owned Newsweek, the Hotel St. Regis, and had many millions in real estate, as well as vast holdings in the automobile, shipping, and air transportation industries. The family's ancestry and fortune traces back to John Jacob Astor, America's richest man by his death in 1848, who accumulated his millions trading fur, tea and real estate. The family name is reflected in Manhattan's Astor Place, the Waldorf-Astoria, etc. Vincent Astor reportedly once told his wife that when he died, she would have "a hell of a good time" giving away his fortune once he died. He died of a heart attack in 1959, and over the next four decades she did give it all away. "Money is like manure," she often said, "It should be spread around." Mrs. Astor gave millions to the Bronx Zoo, the International Rescue Committee, the Fresh Air Fund, Lighthouse for the Blind, the Maternity Center Association, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, among other recipients, large and small. All totalled, she gave away about $195 million. Suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, in 2006 she became the subject of a lawsuit alleging elder abuse by her son, Anthony Dryden Marshall (originally Anthony Kuser, later he adopted the surname of his step father, Charles Marshall). Her grandson claimed that Brooke's son, Anthony Dryden Marshall, forced her to sleep on a urine-drenched couch, kept her beloved dogs locked in a separate room, replaced her name-brand face cream with petroleum jelly, and switched her prescriptions to lower-cost generic drugs. A court appointed Oscar de la Renta's wife Annette, a close friend of Brooke Astor, to act as her temporary guardian, and assigned financial giant J P Morgan Chase to oversee her assets. A Morgan Chase audit raised questions about $14 million in cash, property and stocks that Anthony Dryden Marshall received from his mother, who may not have realized what she was signing. (bio by: Andrew A. Caruso)
Family links:
Spouse:
Vincent Astor (1891 - 1959)
Search Amazon for Brooke Astor | | | Burial:
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Sleepy Hollow
Westchester County
New York, USA
Plot: Section 88, row 2 |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Aug 13, 2007
Find A Grave Memorial# 20928042 |
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