Family Tree

Anthony Dryden Marshall was born May 30, 1924, in Manhattan, according to a birth announcement in the New York Herald Tribune. His father was J. Dryden Kuser, the first husband of the former Roberta Brooke Russell. A high-living scion of a family that included the founder of Prudential Insurance Co., Kuser also served as a New Jersey state senator.

The future Brooke Astor was the daughter of a Marine Corps commandant and just 17 when she married Kuser in 1919. It was a tumultuous marriage in which, she later wrote, her husband pushed her down the stairs when she was pregnant. She moved to Reno in 1929 and divorced him. Three years later, she married investment banker Charles Henry Marshall.

Anthony Kuser took Marshall’s name, though he was never formally adopted, according to “The Last Mrs. Astor,” a 2007 biography by Frances Kiernan.

Charles Marshall died in 1952, and the next year she married Vincent Astor, an heir to one of the largest real estate fortunes in the U.S.

Estate Valuation

In ironic foreshadowing, Brooke Astor was sued by Vincent Astor’s half-brother, John Jacob Astor VI, for persuading Vincent to amend his will in her favor when he was ill in 1958. After pretrial hearings, John Jacob Astor settled his claim for $250,000, according to “The Last Mrs. Astor.” The estate was valued at $127 million.