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Monday, July 8, 2019

Margaret Rutherfurd marries Prince Charles Murat

July 8, 1929


Mrs. Margaret Rutherfurd, the former wife of Sir Paul Dukes, was married today to Prince Charles Michael Joachim Napoleon Murat, third son of Joachim Napoleon, 5th Prince Murat and Marie Cecile  Ney d'Elchingen,  reports the New York Times.

The wedding took place at the Church of St. Francois the Saviour in Paris.

The bride is the daughter of Mrs. William K.  Vanderbilt and the late Lewis Morris Rutherfurd of New York.  Her witnesses were Alan Rutherfurd, her cousin, and Jacques Balsan, who is married to the former Consuelo Vanderbilt.

The Duc d'Elchingen and the groom's brother, Prince Joachim, "appeared for the bridegroom."

It was a quiet ceremony with only "a few intimate friends" in attendance.

The Prince and Princess' civil marriage took place recently in Paris.

This is the third marriage for the Princess.  Her first marriage took place in September 1911 at the "little chapel" on the estate of her stepfather, the late William K. Vanderbilt at Deauville, Normandie, where she married Ogden Livingston Mills, now the Under Secretary of the Treasury.  The couple were divorce in Paris in 1920.

Two years later, in October 1922, she married Sir Paul Dukes, an English author and lecturer, who had been knighted for "his work as head of the British Secret Service in Russia in the early days of the Soviet."

This marriage took place in Nyack, New York.  Sir Paul and Lady Dukes lived in an apartment at 180 Riverside Drive.

Before her divorce from Sir Paul "there were persistent rumors" that she would marry Prince Charles Murat, "should she win her freedom.   Her divorce was finalized earlier this year.

It was during her second marriage that she dabbled as an actress and ballet dancer and also becoming a devotee "of the cult of Oom the omnipotent." Shortly after her divorce from Mills she became involved with "mystic order of the 'Tantriks of India,' a so-called love cult."  It was at the cult's Nyack center where she met Sir Paul Dukes.  He had come to the States "to recuperate from a nervous breakdown."

Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd was born in 1891, the second child of  Anne Harriman and her second husband, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, the younger brother of Winthrop Rutherfurd, who was briefly engaged to Consuelo Vanderbilt, an engagement broken by her mother, Alva, in order to arrange the marriage with the Duke of Marlborough, which ended in divorce.

Anne's third marriage was to Consuelo's father, William Kissam Vanderbilt, thus making Margaret and Consuelo stepsisters.

This is the first marriage for Prince Charles Murat, who was born in 1892.  He is a great-great grandson of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, and Caroline Bonaparte, a sister of Napoleon I.    Prince Charles has American ancestry as his paternal grandmother, Caroline Georgina Fraser from Charleston, South Carolina, married Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, 2nd Prince Pontecorvo and 3rd Prince Murat.






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