Eliot Zborowski

William Elliott Morris Zborowski (1858 – April 1, 1903) was a racing driver. Born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, USA, he was the son of Martin Zborowski (or Zabriskie) and Emma Morris. In 1892 he married a wealthy American heiress, born Margaret Laura Astor Carey (1853–1911), a granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor, Sr. of the prominent Astor family. She had been Madame de Stuers before her divorce from (1841–1919). They were the parents of the racing driver Louis Zborowski. Early life and a change of name Martin Zabriskie, Elliott's father, left the United States for the first time in his life in 1873, when he crossed the Atlantic to Paris with his family to be at The aristocratic world he saw in France made a deep impression and he thought back to stories passed down in the family; the first result of which was, he changed the spelling of his name to Zborowski. Martin's brother, Christopher, did not follow suit. Following his father’s death in 1878, William Elliott returned from Europe to take possession of his inherited fortune. He also adopted his second name, and discarded William. Part of his inheritance was extensive estates near Central Park and along the banks of the Hudson River. He was indescribably rich. Around this time, when Elliott recrossed to Europe, he called himself Count Elliott Zborowski. An unattributed back-story also began of being descended from the marriage of an American girl to a Polish count. Elliott was reported to have said that he adopted the title Count on his father's death in deference to the wishes of his grandfather (Andrew Christian Zabriskie). All that can be said now about the origin of the title is that in the contents of Martin Zborowski’s will in The New York Times there was no mention of it.