Madeleine Talmage Force Astor Madeleine Talmage Force was born on June 19, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York, to William Hurlbut Force and Katherine Arvilla Talmage Force. Her father was a successful businessman and her mother a member of a long-established New York family. The Forces were among the city’s prominent social and financial elite, and Madeleine was educated in fine schools, including Miss Ely’s School and Miss Spence’s School for Girls in Manhattan. She was raised in c

When Charles I. Hudson began assembling farmland in Muttontown around 1906, he envisioned more than a country retreat. A financier and steel investor who had built his fortune in the industrial boom years, Hudson wanted a home that projected Old World elegance against the rural landscape of Long Island’s North Shore. He called it Knollwood. Hudson purchased about 260 acres of former farmland and hired the New York architectural firm of Hiss and Weekes to design a residence wo

Matthew Wayne Shepard was born on December 1, 1976 in Casper, Wyoming, the first son of Dennis and Judy Shepard. His father worked in the...

In the early 1890s Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly and her husband Hamilton McKown Twombly assembled farmland straddling Madison and...

Edith Bouvier Beale known as "Big Edie" was born on October 5, 1895, in New York City, the daughter of John Vernou Bouvier Jr., a...

Anna Nicole Smith Anna Nicole Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan in Houston, Texas, on November 28, 1967. She was the daughter of Donald...