John Dryden Kuser was a New Jersey politician and a member of an influential New Jersey family.
Background
The son of Colonel Anthony R. Kuser and Susan Dryden. His father was the President of the South Jersey Gas and Electric Lighting Company and one of the original investors in Fox Movie Studios and his mother was the daughter of Senator and Prudential Insurance founder John Fairfield Dryden.
Career
Kuser had served on the staffs of three New Jersey governors in the late 19th century, and in 1923, donated his 10,500-acre (42 km2) estate to become High Point State Park, the largest public park in New Jersey. In 1919, Kuser married 17-year-old Brooke Russell (later known as Brooke Astor), and they had a child, Anthony. Kuser launched his political career in 1922, at age 25, winning election as a Bernardsville, New Jersey Councilman.
In 1933 John Kuser was the victim of a kidnapping threat.
A man named George Sabol was arrested and confessed. Democratic Assemblyman James Bowers captured Kuser"s State Senate seat that year.
Three months later, Kuser remarried again and moved to Reno, Nevada, where he became a newspaper columnist. He returned to New Jersey in the late 1950s (after his later fourth marriage ended) and worked as a consultant to the New Jersey Department of Conservation and Economic Development until his death in 1964, aged 66.