Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Madeleine Talmadge FORCE
Excerpts from Madeliene's obit in The Palm Beach Times, undated:
"Mrs. Madeline Force Astor Dick Fiermonte, 47, died at 7:30 o'clock last night at Casa Invierno on Jungle Road, which she had leased for the season, following several months of ill health. Death was attributed to coronary occlusion, a heart ailment. Since her divorce here in 1938 from Enzo Fiermonte, Italian boxer, she had been known as Mrs. Dick.
In spite of her comparative youth, Mrs. Dick had had a most colorful and full life, ranging from her rescue from the liner Titanic as a girl bride, when her husband perished, to her marriage with Fiermonte, 14 years her junior.She was born Madeline Talmadge Force, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Force, in 1893 in Brooklyn. Her first marriage, when she was 18, violated the terms of Col. John Jacob Astor's divorce from Mrs. Ava Willing Astor, which forbade his remarriage. After a year's tour on his steam yacht, the couple was returning from Europe aboard the Titanic, when it went down after striking an iceberg April 14, 1912. Col. Astor placed his young wife, soon to become a mother, in a lifeboat from which she was subsequently rescued by the liner Carpathia. On August 14, 1912, John Jacob Astor, the sixth of the name, was born. By the terms of her husband's will, she received the income of a trust fund of $5,000,000 as long as she remained a widow, in the event of her re-marriage, it was stipulated the fund would go to William Vincent Astor. The will also provided a $3,000,000 trust fund for any child that might survive him.
On June 22, 1916, she became the bride of William K. Dick, wealthy banker, at Bar Harbor, Maine, and they had two sons, William, Jr., and John Henry. After a Reno divorce in June 1933 from Dick, she traveled abroad and met Fiermonte. They were married in November, 1933, in a New York hospital, where she was a patient. Their marriage ended in divorce here in June 1938, when Fiermonte was in Europe. She was reported to have settled $17,000 on him.
Mrs. Dick had spent comparatively little time in Palm Beach in late years, but arrived in early January this year. Her eldest son, John Jacob Astor, took a house nearby, Casa Alexando, leased from the Paulding Fosdicks. On their return, he and his wife and small son, William, moved to Whitehall for a short time, leaving there Monday of this week. When her children were small she spent her winters in Palm Beach, taking an active part in social life, from which she dropped out considerably after her marriage to Fiermonte. En route to Palm Beach she stopped at her plantation at Aiken, which suffered a disastrous fire."
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