Martha "Sunny" Sharp Crawford, daughter of George W. Crawford and Annie Laurie Warmack Crawford, was born at Manassas, VA, 1 September 1931. Sunny’s father, who was the founder and chairman of the Columbia Gas and Electric Company, died when his only child was three, leaving a fortune of $75,000,000. Her mother purchased Tamberlane, an estate in Greenwich, CT, and a Fifth Avenue apartment.

Sunny graduated from Chapin School in New York City then was removed to Europe when she fell in love with a Russian translator from a noble but penniless family. Sunny’s mother remarried Russell Aitken in 1957 and they took Sunny with them to the Schloss Mittersell in the Austrian Alps where she met her future husband. She married as his first wife on 20 July 1957, Prince Alfred von Auersperg, born Salzburg 20 July 1936, died Salzburg 19 June 1992. The wedding was performed at Tamberlane, her family estate in Greenwich, CT, by a Catholic priest.

Sunny’s daughter, Annie-Laurie “Ala,” married as her second husband 9 June 1989, American banker Ralph Isham, born 17 Apr 1956. Sunny’s son, Prince Alexander “Alex,” married NYC 10 June 1995, American Nancy Louise Weinberg, born Norfolk, VA 10 May 1959. Prince Alfred and Sunny Crawford divorced and he married two more times and had an additional daughter by his third marriage.

Martha married second, in NYC 6 June 1966, Claus Borberg, born in Copenhagen 11 August 1926, who was adopted and used his mother’s name of Bulow altering it to “von Bulow.” He was an attorney in London and served as vice president of Getty Oil. The story of their marriage and her subsequent coma was told in the book and movie "Reversal of Fortune." Claus was charged with her attempted murder but subsequently acquitted after a lengthy, expensive, and well-publicized legal battle. Sunny and von Bulow had a daughter, Cosima, who sided with her father in his trials for the attempted murder of his wife. Sunny’s mother, whose estate was worth $90 million, had drawn her will so that her three grandchildren would share equally at her death. Mrs. Crawford rewrote her will excluding Cosima and dividing her $90 million equally between Sunny’s two children by Prince Alfred. Cosima and her father continue to live in Sunny’s homes and to draw income from her estate while Sunny was in a persistent vegetative state until December of 2008.