Was born Roberta Brooke Russell in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only child of John Henry Russell, Jr. (1872-1947), the 16th Commandant of the Marine Corps and his wife, née Mabel Cecile Hornby Howard (1879-1967). Her paternal grandfather was John Henry Russell, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. She was named for her maternal grandmother, Roberta Traill Brooke MacGill Howard and was known as Bobby to close friends and family.Due to her father's career, she spent much of her childhood living in China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other places. Also, she briefly attended The Madeira School in 1919 but graduated from Holton-Arms.
She married her first husband, John Dryden Kuser (1897-1964), shortly after her seventeenth birthday, on 26 April 1919, in Washington, D.C. "I certainly wouldn't advise getting married that young to anyone," she said later in life. "At the age of sixteen, you're not jelled yet. The first thing you look at, you fall in love with."
Her husband, the son of the financier and conservationist Col. Anthony Rudolph Kuser and grandson of U.S. Senator John F. Dryden, later became a New Jersey Republican councilman, assemblyman, and state senator.
"Worst years of my life"was how Astor described her tumultuous first marriage, which was punctuated by her husband's physical abuse, alcoholism and adultery. According to Frances Kiernan's 2007 biography of Brooke Astor, when Brooke was six months pregnant with the couple's only child, her husband broke her jaw during a marital fight. "I learned about terrible manners from the family of my first husband," she told The New York Times. '"They didn't know how to treat people." Her husband was scarcely better behaved. A year after the marriage, according to a published account of the divorce proceedings, Dryden Kuser "began to embarrass her in social activities, ... told her that he no longer loved her and that their marriage was a failure."
Astor had one child with Dryden Kuser, Anthony Dryden Kuser, born in 1924.
In June 1929, Kuser insisted that his wife leave him. After waiting for the successful end to his New Jersey senatorial campaign, she filed for divorce on 15 February 1930, in Reno, Nevada. It was finalized later that year.
Her second husband, whom she married in 1932, was Charles Henry "Buddy" Marshall (1891-1952). Marshall was the senior partner of the investment firm Butler, Herrick & Marshall, a brother-in-law of the mercantile heir Marshall Field III, and a descendant of James Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library.
Astor later wrote that the marriage was "a great love match."
She had two stepchildren by the marriage, Peter Marshall and Helen Huntington Marshall.
In 1942, Anthony Dryden Kuser, then 18 years old, changed his name to Anthony Dryden Marshall. It is unclear whether or not he was formally adopted by his stepfather.
Her husband's financial fortunes turned in the mid 1940s, at which time Brooke Marshall went to work for eight years as a features editor at House & Garden magazine. She also briefly worked for Ruby Ross Wood, a prominent New York interior decorator who, with her associate Billy Baldwin, decorated the Marshalls' apartment at 1 Gracie Square in New York City.
In 1953, eleven months after Charles Marshall's death, she married her third and final husband, Vincent Astor (1891-1959), the chairman of the board of Newsweek magazine and the last notably rich American member of the famous Astor family. The oldest son of Titanic victim Colonel John Jacob Astor IV (1864-1912) and his first wife, Ava Lowle Willing, he had been married and divorced twice before and was known to have a difficult personality.
"He had a dreadful childhood, and as a result, had moments of deep melancholy," Astor recalled. "But I think I made him happy. That's what I set out to do. I'd literally dance with the dogs, sing and play the piano, and I would make him laugh, something no one had ever done before. Because of his money, Vincent was very suspicious of people. That's what I tried to cure him of."
According to an oft-told story in society circles, Astor agreed to divorce his second wife, Minnie, only after she had found him a replacement spouse. After first suggesting Janet Newbold Ryan Stewart Bush, the newly divorced wife of James S. Bush, who turned down Astor's proposal with startling candor -- "I don't even like you," she reportedly said -- Minnie Astor suggested the recently widowed Brooke Marshall. Whatever the circumstances, few people believed that the Astor-Marshall union was anything more than a financial transaction. As Brooke Astor's friend the novelist Louis Auchincloss said, “Of course she married Vincent for the money,” adding, “I wouldn’t respect her if she hadn’t. Only a twisted person would have married him for love.”
During her brief marriage to Astor, whom she called "Captain," Astor participated in his real-estate and hotel empire and his philanthropic endeavors. Between 1954 and 1958, she redecorated one of his properties, the Hotel St. Regis, which had been built by his father.
Though she received several proposals after Astor's death, she chose not to remarry. "I'd have to marry a man of a suitable age and somebody who was a somebody, and that's not easy. Frankly, I think I'm unmarriageable now," Astor said in an interview in 1980, when she was 78. "I'm too used to having things my way. But I still enjoy a flirt now and then."
Though she was appointed a member of the board of the Astor Foundation soon after her marriage, upon Vincent Astor's death in 1959, she took charge of all the philanthropies to which he left his fortune. Despite liquidating the Vincent Astor Foundation in 1997, she continued to be active in charities and in New York's social life. The New York Public Library was always one of Astor's favorite charities. As a result of her charity work, Astor was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Her life's motto summed up her prodigious generosity with the quote, "Money is like manure, it should be spread around."
Among numerous other organizations, she was involved with Lighthouse for the Blind, the Maternity Center Association, the Astor Home for emotionally disturbed children, the International Rescue Committee, the Fresh Air Fund, and the Women's Auxiliary Board of the Society of New York Hospital.Astor died on August 13, 2007 at the age of 105 from Pneumonia at her home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
One of Astor's death notices in the Times, a paid notice from The Rockefeller University, ended with these lines:
Though she received several proposals after Astor's death, she chose not to remarry. "I'd have to marry a man of a suitable age and somebody who was a somebody, and that's not easy. Frankly, I think I'm unmarriageable now," Astor said in an interview in 1980, when she was 78. "I'm too used to having things my way. But I still enjoy a flirt now and then."
Though she was appointed a member of the board of the Astor Foundation soon after her marriage, upon Vincent Astor's death in 1959, she took charge of all the philanthropies to which he left his fortune. Despite liquidating the Vincent Astor Foundation in 1997, she continued to be active in charities and in New York's social life. The New York Public Library was always one of Astor's favorite charities. As a result of her charity work, Astor was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Her life's motto summed up her prodigious generosity with the quote, "Money is like manure, it should be spread around."
Among numerous other organizations, she was involved with Lighthouse for the Blind, the Maternity Center Association, the Astor Home for emotionally disturbed children, the International Rescue Committee, the Fresh Air Fund, and the Women's Auxiliary Board of the Society of New York Hospital.Astor died on August 13, 2007 at the age of 105 from Pneumonia at her home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
One of Astor's death notices in the Times, a paid notice from The Rockefeller University, ended with these lines:
"And if you should survive to 105,
Look at all you'll derive out of being alive.
Then here is the best part,
You'll have a head start,
If you are among the very young at heart."
She is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York. The epitaph on her gravestone, chosen by her, simply reads: "I had a wonderful life".
