Rosamond Sturgis (Dixey) Brooks (1887-1948) Born June 10, 1887 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ellen Sturgis Tappan and Richard Cowell Dixey. First married June 7, 1913 in Lenox, Massachusetts, to Gorham Brooks II. Married August 13, 1941 in Carson City, Nevada, to Andrew Hopewell Hepburn Sr.

Rosamond Sturgis (Dixey) Brooks Hepburn died on June 1, 1948 in Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Burial, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Andrew Hopewell Hepburn plot, Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Four children with her first husband Gorham Brooks II. Mrs. Hepburn did not have children by her second marriage to Andrew Hopewell Hepburn.

Family history

Ellen Sturgis (Tappan) Dixey was the daughter of William Aspinwall Tappan and Caroline "Cary" (Sturgis) Tappan. The Tappans built a home called "Tanglewood" as a summer retreat on a large wooded property on Lenox. William Aspinwall Tappan was a son of Lewis Tappan, the noted abolishionist and businessman who hired John Quincy Adams to represent the passengers on the Amistad, an historical event about which much can be found online and the subject of a recent Hollywood

movie.

Lewis Tappan's first wife Susanna (Aspinwall) Tappan of Brookline, Massachusetts, was the mother of his children and Mrs. Hepburn's direct ancestor. Susanna's father Dr. William Aspinwall was the son of Lt. Thomas and Johanna (Gardner) Aspinwall, also of Brookline.

By his father, Dr. William Aspinwall was a descendant of Peter and Remember (Palfrey) Aspinwall, the first generation of the Aspinwall family of Massachusetts and New York. Peter Aspinwall built a home in the hamlet called Muddy River (now Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts). The Massachusetts and New York branches of Aspinwall family were descendants of Peter Aspinwall. Elizabeth (Kortright) Monroe was a direct descendant of Peter Aspinwall and Remember (Palfrey) Aspinwall. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a also a direct descendant, and thus a distant cousin to Rosamond. Many others of great talent and notable achievements, including famed decorator Dorothy Draper and also Nancy Ludlow Tuckerman, Jacqueline Kennedy's social secretary, were direct descendants of Peter Aspinwall and Remember (Palfrey) in the New York branch of the Aspinwall line.

Lt. Thomas Aspinwall was a first cousin of Mary (Stevens) Warren, mother of famed Revolutionary hero Dr. Joseph Warren. Dr. William Aspinwall and Dr. Joseph Warren were friends, colleagues, and second cousins. By his mother Johanna (Gardner) Aspinwall, Dr. William Aspinwall was a cousin to President John Adams, a close friend to the family as well as cousin. John Quincy Adams and Dr. William Aspinwall's son Col. Thomas Aspinwall, U.S. Consul to London, were also friends as well as being colleagues involved in government positions. Their correspondence can be found online. Lewis Tappan and John Quincy Adams were friends as well as colleagues, and they were relatives by way of the Aspinwall-Tappan marriage. Lewis Tappan hired John Quincy Adams and also funded the Amistad trial, as noted above.

Col. Thomas Aspinwall, consul, was the brother of Susanna (Aspinwall) Tappan (mother of William Aspinwall Tappan). Col Thomas Aspinwall has been called "The First Transatlantic Literary Agent" very relevant to Mrs. Hepburn's family ties to noted authors of the 19th century.

Lewis Tappan's brother Arthur Tappan was a business partner to his brother and also to their cousin Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the famous inventor who himself was yet another descendant of Peter and Remember (Palfrey) Aspinwall, and therefore a cousin to Rosamond Sturgis (Dixey) Brooks Hepburn on the Aspinwall side of her ancestry as well as by the Tappan line. Arthur Tappan was a leading abolishionist. He married Fanny Antill of New York. Their son Edward Antill Tappan married into the same Gardner family as that of Mrs. Hepburn's first husband, Gorham Brooks II.

The ties by bloodlines and marriages are interwoven over several generations. Both Rosamond and her first husband Gorham Brooks were descendants of Nathaniel Sparhawk and Patience (Newman) Sparhawk, of Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Gorham Brooks was a descendant by their daughter Sybil (Sparhawk) Avery Wigglesworth and her first husband Dr. Jonathan Avery. The Aspinwall family shared these same lineages, with Lt. Col. Thomas Aspinwall, of Brookline, marrying Lucy Sparhawk, a daughter of Hon. Thomas and Mary (Oliver) Sparhawk, of Cambridge. Lt. Col. Thomas Aspinwall was the brother of Rosamond's second great-grandfather Dr. William Aspinwall, whose wife Susannah Gardner was a daughter of Mary Sparhawk and Isaac Gardner, and also the niece of his brother Lt. Col Thomas Aspinwall's wife Lucy (Sparhawk) Aspinwall. Family ties such as these remained important to the families Gardner, Brooks, Tappan, Sparhawk, and Aspinwall well into the 20th century.

Rosamond Sturgis (Dixey) Brooks and her aunt Mary Aspinwall Tappan, heirs to the Tanglewood estate first owned by William Aspinwall Tappan, donated the property to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Today the house and grounds are a cultural center and summer venue for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A number of resources, many now found online, tell this history. The legacy of the Aspinwall-Tappan family in this line is embodied by their support for abolishing slavery, great interest in the arts and culture, and by environmental conservation and protection of open land.

Caroline (Sturgis) Tappan was a writer and poet closely associated with the Transcendentalists. She and William Aspinwall Tappan hosted friends and writers at Tanglewood. That literary heritage and legacy is preserved in the work of Mrs. Tappan and several of her contemporaries.

Mrs. Rosamond Sturgis (Dixey) Brooks Hepburn was a mother and patron of the arts. Her children were with her first husband, Gorham Brooks II. All of their children made important contributions to mankind by virtue of their interest in cultural and political affairs.

Rosamond Sturgis Dixey Brooks Hepburn

Mrs. Gorham Brooks II

Mrs. Andrew Hopewell Hepburn

1887 — 1948