High school students from Northeast Harbor will be among the beneficiaries of the late New York socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, a summer resident of Mount Desert Island whose estate was settled last week.

The settlement, reached after a years-long dispute among members of the prominent family, bequeathed a percentage of Astor’s estate to the Ellsworth-based Maine Community Foundation for “assisting high school programs which will best prepare the children of Northeast Harbor, Maine, for productive careers.”

Additional Photos

Brooke Astor, who died in 2007 at age 105, was a summer resident of Mount Desert Island in Maine. A dispute over her estate was settled last week. 1997 AP File Photo

The allotment comes out to about $650,000, according to the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who negotiated the settlement.

Astor, who died in 2007 at the age of 105, was married to Vincent Astor, son of the wealthy businessman and Titanic victim John Jacob Astor IV. A controversy began over her estate in the years before her death, when accusations arose that Anthony Marshall, her son from a previous marriage, was deceptively taking money and control of the estate from his mother, who had dementia, according to The New York Times.

Marshall, who was convicted after his mother’s death of stealing from her, received $14.5 million in the settlement — about half of the inheritance left to him in Astor’s most recent will, according to Schneiderman’s office.

About $100 million of Astor’s endowment will go to charities. Beneficiaries include New York City education, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.

Officials with the Maine Community Foundation, which manages more than 1,300 funds, knew that it was named in Astor’s settlement but had not been contacted about receiving the money and did not know how much had been allotted, said spokesman Carl Little.

Little called the $650,000 bequest “a very substantial gift.”

Rob Liebow, superintendent of the Mount Desert Island Regional School System, was unaware of the donation, but on Monday he thought of many ways that it could be used well.

He said that only 16 of the 520 students at Mount Desert Island High School come from Northeast Harbor, a village in the town of Mount Desert. He imagined a student using the money to fund travel expenses for an internship with a scientist in California, tuition for a boat-building class during summer vacation or tutoring sessions.

The money also could be used for a new program at the high school that would benefit all students, including those from Northeast Harbor, if that’s allowed, Liebow said.

Little said the foundation “will probably work with people from the high school and the community to figure out how to best use the fund.”

He said the money will likely be treated as an endowment and only the annual investment returns, usually around 5 percent, will be spent.

That’s how the foundation uses an endowment for teachers and librarians from Mount Desert that Astor established in 1984 with a $100,000 grant from the Vincent Astor Foundation. That fund was worth $183,000 last year, when it paid for eight grants totaling $7,720, said Little.

Little and Liebow said grant recipients have used the money to travel for professional development, including spending time with Hopi Indians and attending plays in New York City.

Astor didn’t just give money to the people of Northeast Harbor. She also was an active member of the community, said Bob Pyle, the recently retired director of the Northeast Harbor Library who knew Astor as a friend and a longtime member of the library board.

Pyle said she was on a first-name basis with many people who worked in town and once held a cocktail party for about 120 of them, including the postal workers and her own caterers, “to thank the people that made it possible for her to enjoy the quality of life there.”

Pyle said there’s a policy in Northeast Harbor, which has long been the summer home to Rockefellers and Fords, “that the rich and famous (are) not treated that way.”

Still, Astor didn’t blend into the crowd, said Little. He described her as “a grande dame, someone who had wonderful hats and wonderful outfits and everything in place all the time.”

Little got to know Astor when a mutual friend asked if he would help her brush up on her French before she left for a trip abroad.

Little, who has a master’s degree in French, visited Astor at her home so she could practice speaking the language conversationally. “Her French was really better than mine,” he said.

Little said Astor was “just delightful,” and that made it difficult to read about the bitter feud over her estate — a family conflict that has its roots in Northeast Harbor.

According to New York Times reports during her son’s trial, prosecutors accused Marshall of stealing from his mother to appease his wife, Charlene, whom Astor despised.

The couple met in Northeast Harbor when Charlene Marshall was married to the Rev. Paul Gilbert, who was the pastor of a local church, St. Mary’s by the Sea.

The Marshalls own several properties in town, including the $2.8 million estate known as Cove End, where Astor spent her summers, according to Mount Desert’s assessing records.

Pyle said that after visiting for Memorial Day weekend, Astor would move up to Northeast Harbor around the Fourth of July and stay through September. He said she “was particularly fond of hiking” in Acadia with her dogs.

“She was such a warm-hearted and great woman,” Little said, “one of the greatest, I would say.”

Staff Writer Leslie Bridgers can be contacted at: 791-6364 or at lbridgers@pressherald.com

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