Kitty Rothschild
Katherine "Kitty", Baroness Eugène von Rothschild was an American socialite. She was chosen by noted Parisian dress designers as one of the world's ten best-dressed women.
Early life
Katherine "Kitty" Wolf was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 13 March 1885. She was a daughter of the Dr. Lawrence Wolff, a physician in Philadelphia, and Mary Olivia Wolff, who married in 1883. Her father was an 1880 graduate of Jefferson Medical College. Her maternal grandparents were Dr. Roger Keys and the former Kate Olive Cathcart.She studied music in Munich.
Personal life
After her time in Munich, she eloped in Manhattan on 20 June 1904 to Dandridge Spotswood, a New Yorker of Virginian ancestry. An industrial and mining engineer, he was the son of William Francisco Spotswood and Isabella Matoaca Spotswood. The young couple lived for a period in New York before she moved to Europe, attaining a high social position in Paris and London as well as in New York. The marriage ended in divorce.Second marriage
On October 24, 1911, she married Count Erwein von Schönborn-Buchheim at the Church of St. Honoré d'Eylau in Paris. He was the youngest son of Erwein, 4th Count of Schönborn-Buchheim and Countess Franziska von Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg. Although she was raised Protestant, she became a Roman Catholic in order to marry Count Erwein. Among his siblings were Countess Anna Marie von Schönborn-Buchheim, Countess Franziska von Schönborn-Buchheim, Countess Irma Caroline Gabrielle von Schönborn-Buchheim, and Friedrich Karl, 5th Count of Schönborn-Buchheim.Third marriage
On 28 April 1925, after living together in Paris following her 1924 divorce, she married Baron Eugène von Rothschild, a younger son of Albert Salomon von Rothschild and Bettina Caroline de Rothschild, members of the Rothschild [banking family of Austria|Austrian branch of the family]. "Upon her marriage into the Rothschild family, it was reported that she had embraced the Jewish faith."A friend of Wallis Simpson, after Edward VIII abdicated he traveled to Schloss Enzesfeld, Kitty and Eugène's castle in Enzesfeld near Vienna, staying there for three months until Simpson's divorce was finalized so they could marry.
In 1940, shortly after the beginning of World War II, Kitty and Eugène left France for the United States. In 1941, they settled at Still House, a Georgian Colonial style home set on a 44-acre estate formerly owned by Paul D. Cravath in Locust Valley on Long Island. Kitty "often assisted financially various charitable and patriotic causes. In 1940 she presented shoes to an entire French regiment."
The marriage to Baron Eugène was happy, but childless. The Baroness died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 62 at Still House on October 9, 1946. After her death, Eugène remarried the British actress Jeanne Stuart on 21 December 1952. They both lived in New York City and Long Island but eventually left to live in Monte Carlo where he died in 1976.