On June 14, 1904, Goelet married Marie Elsie Whelen (1880–1959) in Philadelphia with
Alice Roosevelt as one of her bridesmaids. She was the daughter of Henry Whelan Jr., a prominent banker from Philadelphia, and the sister of Laura Whelan, who was married to
Craig Biddle (brother of
Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle). Before their divorce in 1914 (she later remarried to the artist
Henry Clews Jr. and moved to the
Chateau de la Napoule in France), they were the parents of two sons: • Ogden Goelet (1907–1969), who married five times, the first being to Florence Enid Connfelt (1912–1992) in 1933. They divorced in 1938, and later that year, he married Maria Virginia Zimbalist (1915–1981), the daughter of singer
Alma Gluck and
violinist
Efrem Zimbalist. They divorced in March 1941, and in April 1941, he married Mimi Nicholson Browne (1922), whom he also divorced. He later married for the fifth time to Sarah Sherborne Haigh (1908–1989) in 1963, remaining married until his death in 1969. • Peter Goelet (1911–1986) a close friend of Goelet. The marriage reportedly infuriated his mother, who refused to receive his wife, and she cut him off from his share in her personal fortune, closed her New York home, her Newport home, and went to England to live. They eventually won over his mother four years later after the birth of a son, • Robert Wilson Goelet, Jr. (1921–1989), a film producer who first married
Jane Potter Monroe in 1942. They divorced, and in 1949, he remarried to
Lynn Merrick. After their marriage, his mother disinherited him. After a "stormy" marriage, they divorced in 1956. On September 24, 1925, he married for the third time to Roberta Willard (1891–1949), the daughter of Col. Joseph Willard of Newport. Roberta had reportedly been voted "the prettiest debutante there in 1916." Both of their mothers were ill and could not attend the wedding, with her mother dying a month later, and his mother, a few years later in 1929. who married (and later divorced)
James Eliot Cross in 1949. She later married Harold C. King. 's southern garden, c. 1920 Following his donation of Ochre Court in 1947, he purchased a home known as Champ Soleil, designed by
Polhemus & Coffin and located at 601
Bellevue Avenue in Newport. He served on the boards of
Bailey's Beach and the
Newport Country Club, both of which were co-founded by his uncle, and which he was one of the largest shareholders. In New York, he was a member of the
Knickerbocker Club, the
Harvard Club, Turf Club, the
St. Nicholas Society, the
Piping Rock Club, and the
Tuxedo Club. His funeral was held at St. Thomas’s and he was buried at
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. He was worth an estimated $50,000,000 (equivalent to approximately $ in dollars) at the time of his death. In October 1966, Goelet's collection of 18th century French furniture, porcelain, and other valuable objects from his New York and Newport homes were auctioned off by
Parke-Bernet in New York.
Descendants Through his eldest son Ogden, he was the grandfather of Ogden Goelet Jr. and Enid Goelet (1934–2005), who married Ranald Trask McNeil (1933–2013), ==References==