Brooke Astor Brooke Astor Roberta Brooke Astor (née Russell; March 30, 1902 – August 13, 2007) was an American philanthropist, socialite, and writer who was the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation, which had been established by her third husband, Vincent Astor, son of John Jacob Astor IV and great-great grandson of America's first multi-millionaire, John Jacob Astor. Brooke Astor was the author of two novels and two volumes of personal memoirs. Brooke was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only child of John Henry Russell, Jr. (1872–1947), the 16th Commandant of the Marine Corps, and his wife, Mabel Cecile Hornby Howard
David Astor known under his pen name George Orwell. Astor bought both burial plots when he learned that Orwell had asked to be buried in an English country churchyard. David Astor Francis David Langhorne Astor CH (5 March 1912 – 7 December 2001) was an English newspaper publisher and member of the Astor family. David Astor was born in London, England, the third child of American-born English parents, Waldorf Astor (1879–1952) and Nancy Witcher Langhorne (1879–1964). The product of an immensely wealthy business dynasty, and raised in the grandeur of a great country estate where the political and intellectual elite gathered, he