The
Rockefeller heirs grew up in the family enclave at Pocantico
Hills. a private fiefdom of some 3500 acres on the Hudson
River 50 miles north of New York City. There were employed
as many as 1500 servants, guards. secretaries and other
retainers to care for the eleven baronial mansions on
the estate. The playhouse where the heirs spent much
of their childhood had an indoor swimming pool, indoor
tennis and courts. billiard tables, two bowling alleys
and closets full of toys. There were also such recreational
facilities on the estate as a private golf course, stables,
miles of private riding trails and six swimming pools.
The eldest heir and
only daughter, Abby, was born in 1903. "Babs," as she
called herself, attended finishing school, and, as their
was no place for a woman in the family power machine,
married three times. Taking on the surnames of her husbands,
she became Abbey Milton Pardee Mauze. Like other women
in the Rockefeller family, she was carefully shielded
from any public role the Rockefeller managers who invested
her funds, and arranged her political contributions.
She was rarely during her lifetime mentioned in the
press by the Rockefeller public relations machine in
Room 5600. Even the authorized biographies of the family,
while focusing on her 5 brothers, minimize her existence.
For example, the lengthily official biography of her
father mentions her only once in passing in a footnote
referring to her as "Mrs. Jean Mauze." In almost all
other family biographies, she was simply subsumed under
the collective title "the Rockefeller messieurs." After
she dies in 1976, a number of professorship were created
at Rockefeller University in her name, a memorial liaison
with the Rockefeller dynasty.
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