Brooke Astor
Family Member
Remembered best as the third wife of wealthy businessman Vincent Astor, this socialite and one-time chairperson of the Vincent Astor Foundation also had a career as a writer. Her publications include The Bluebird is at Home and Patchwork Child: Early Memories.
Born Roberta Brooke Russell, she grew up in New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, as the only child of Mabel Howard and United States Marine Corps Commander John Henry Russell, Jr.
A prominent philanthropist, she supported organizations such as The New York Public Library, The Animal Medical Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Her first marriage, to politician John Dryden Kuser, began when she was just seventeen years old and ended eleven years later. Following the death of her second husband, Charles Henry Marshall (an investment banker and the father of her son Anthony), she married Vincent Astor.
She was a distant relative of German-born multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor.