Walter Langdon (1788-1847)
Colonel Walter Langdon, of Hyde Park, Dutchess County, New York
He eloped with the heiress Dorothea Astor during the War of 1812, but "survived (John Jacob Astor's) outrage to become a loyal part of the Astor circle". At least two of his Wilks grandchildren were born at the Astor Mansion in the 1840s and in the same period the family patriarch bought the Langdons both Langdon House and the Vanderbilt Mansion in a bid to keep them on American soil - they preferred to travel in Europe. He died at Hyde Park in 1847 and was the father of seven children.
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Image Courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library; Mrs. Astor's New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (2004), by Eric Homberger.