Why We Chose this Name for Our Blog

When I was looking for a name for our little blog, I googled Cushing Sisters, having no idea of the infamous "Fabulous Cushing Sisters" and their lives.  Once I started reading a little about them, it became obvious that although we may share a name, there is little else about our lives that is similar.  However, my sister and I live our own kind of fabulous lives....

While you are waiting to read about our adventures, here's an excerpt with some history on the original "Fabulous Cushing Sisters":

Socialites: A History  by David Patrick Columbia

The Cushing Sisters and their family at the wedding of Bill and Babe Paley, July 1947, at Greentree, the Whitney estate in Manhasset. L. to r. rear: Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cushing, Minnie and Vincent Astor, Bill and Babe Paley, Jock and Betsey Whitney. Front row: Sarah Roosevelt, Tony Mortimer, Mrs. Harvey Cushing, Amanda Mortimer, and Kate Roosevelt.


"There also were those girls from Boston, the Cushing Sisters whose father was not rich but was revered and esteemed by the public because he was America’s first neurosurgeon. Their real status, however, as socialites, was determined by their marriages (and affairs).
The middle sister Betsey married in 1930 to James Roosevelt whose father Franklin D. two years later became President of the United States. That marriage produced two daughters, a divorce and a second marriage to John Hay Whitney, one of America’s wealthiest men. The eldest Cushing daugher, Mary Benedict, known as Minnie, took up with real estate heir Vincent Astor, as his mistress (he was still married to his first wife, Helen Huntington), and they finally married in the early 40s. The youngest, and real beauty of the Cushing family, Barbara (known as Babe) married the blue-blooded Stanley Mortimer, who she later divorced and married for a second time to William Paley, the broadcasting tycoon (founder of CBS).
Like many young ambitious socially women who came after, the Cushings had a powerful mother whose aspirations, not unlike the typical stage mothers, influenced them to marry rich and marry up. Although these girls were already “socialites” by the terms of the day, like so many others, they aspired to, they quite naturally in time took on an air of old society. Manners reigned (at least in public)."