Katharine Mortimer

Who was Katharine Mortimer?

Katharine Mortimer was an American socialite.

She was one of the six children of the stockbroker and U.S. amateur court tennis champion Stanley Grafton Mortimer and Kathleen Tilford. Through her mother she was the granddaughter of Henry Morgan Tilford, who was a president of Standard Oil Company and a resident of Tuxedo Park, NY. Her brother Stanley Grafton Mortimer Jr. married firstly socialite Babe Paley and then Kathleen H. Harriman, the daughter of W. Averell Harriman.

In her youth she was romantically linked to Joseph Kennedy Jr. but she declined to become more seriously involved with Joe Jr. because, she claimed, his family was too loud.

She married, as her first husband, Oliver Cadwell Biddle, by whom she had one daughter, Christine Mortimer Biddle.

In 1949 she married the tennis star and socialite Francis Xavier Shields, the paternal grandfather of actress Brooke Shields. With Shields she had two sons, Alston Shields and William Xavier Orin Hunt Shields, and one daughter, Katharine Shields.

She married, as her third husband, Richard Gillespie Blaine, by whom she had one son, Walker Blaine.