Margaret Rockefeller Strong (June 11, 1897 - December 5, 1985) was an American heiress and prominent member of the

Rockefeller family The Rockefeller family ( ) is an American Industrial sector, industrial, political, and List of banking families, banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the History of the petroleum industry in th ...

. She was the maternal granddaughter of

John D. Rockefeller John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was one of the List of richest Americans in history, wealthiest Americans of all time and one of the richest people in modern hist ...

and his wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

Early life and education

She was the daughter of Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller (1866–1906) and Dr. Charles Augustus Strong (1862–1940). Her maternal grandfather was

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...

co-founder

(1839–1937).

Career

Margaret saved a row of Neo-Federal townhouses on

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a boulevard in New York City that carries north and southbound traffic in the borough (New York City), boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the wes ...

designed by McKim, Mead & White from destruction by purchasing the property and giving one of the townhouses to the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in 1965. She then donated the corner townhouse to her cousin, David Rockefeller, who there founded the Center for Inter-American Relations, now the Americas Society. In December 1979, Margaret donated her father's estate, Villa Le Balze in Fiesole, Tuscany, Italy to

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

which operates an overseas campus there. Her life can be read at ''El Inútil de la Familia'', a book written by Jorge Edwards, a Chilean writer.

Personal life

She married Chilean ballet businessman George de Cuevas on August 3, 1927. They had two children; * Elizabeth de Cuevas (1929-2023) who married Joel Carmichael, a writer, in 1960. They had one daughter; Deborah Carmichael. *John de Cuevas (October 6, 1930 - December 6, 2018), an educator and philanthropist, who married three times. His first marriage to his boyhood sweetheart Phyllis Nahl Van Wyck was in 1951. He remarried in April 1962 to Silvia Maria Bartucci having one daughter; Margaret de Cuevas and two granddaughters. In 1988, he married a third time to Sue Lonoff. After her first husband, George de Cuevas, died in 1961, she married Raymundo de Larraín Valdés (1935–1988) in 1977. There was a fight about her estate which ended in a court settlement in 1987.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strong, Margaret Rockefeller 1897 births 1985 deaths Rockefeller family