Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Jr. was an American stockbroker and lawyer.
Background
Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Jr. was born on August 15, 1897 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States to Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, a merchant and financier, and Emma Brewster Jennings.
The first Auchinclosses arrived in the United States in 1803 and established a business in the import and distribution of yarn. They later branched out into dry-goods, merchandising and investments in nitrates, rail-roads, banking, and real estate.
The family name is intertwined through marital and business alliances with such famed American families as the Rockefellers, Tiffanys, and Vanderbilts. Among his relatives were his cousin, Louis S. Auchincloss, the novelist and New York lawyer, and James C. Auchincloss, the longtime representative of New Jersey's Third Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.
Much of his considerable inherited wealth came from his mother, who was the daughter of Oliver B. Jennings, one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company.
Education
After graduating from the Groton School in Massachusetts, Auchincloss entered Yale, from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1920, having interrupted his studies briefly to serve in the navy during World War I.
After the war he studied at Kings College, Cambridge; traveled to Russia in 1922 to assist university students in connection with the Student Friendship Fund and then earned his law degree from Columbia University in 1924.
Career
After the university Auchincloss practiced as a lawyer in New York from 1924 to 1926, when he moved to Washington to serve as a special agent in aeronautics at the Commerce Department. In 1927, he was appointed an aviation specialist in the Western European Division of the State Department.
In 1931, Auchincloss requested permission to maintain his position in the State Department while establishing a stock-brokerage firm with his friends Chauncey Parker and Albert G. Redpath. When the request was denied, he resigned his government post to join the newly formed Auchincloss, Parker, and Redpath. Later that year he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The company came to have fifteen offices in East Coast cities.
Auchincloss also had an interest in many philanthropic organizations and was director of both the Boys Club of Newport County and the Boys Club of America.
Auchincloss worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence and the War Department and was commissioned with the rank of Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve on May 26, 1942, serving in the United States Navy during World War II.
On September 12, 1953, standing in for the absent Jack Bouvier, he escorted Jacqueline down the aisle at her wedding to Senator John F. Kennedy.
In the early 1960s, Auchincloss's carefully guarded privacy was encroached upon when he made a contract to sell the forty-six-acre Merrywood estate.
When this maneuver failed, the firm merged with the brokerage house of Thomson and McKinnon, the new firm being known as Thomson and MacKinnon Auchincloss Kohlmeyer.
Later that year his finances deteriorated further, and he realized that he would be forced to sell Hammersmith Farm.
Achievements
Politics
He was a Republican and a substantial Republican campaign contributor.
Membership
Member of the University Club, member of the New York Yacht Club, member of Grolier Club, member of Raquet and Tennis Club, member of the Burning Tree Club, member of the Metropolitan Club.
Personality
He was known to be socially refined, dependable, intensely private, and somewhat staid. He also had a proclivity for long, repetitive stories and absentmindedness.
Interests
Reading
Sport & Clubs
Raquet, tennis, yachting, golf
Connections
Auchincloss married Maria de Chrapovitsky, the daughter of a Russian naval officer, on June 4, 1925. They had one child and were divorced in 1932.
His second marriage, on Oct. 8, 1935, was to Nina Gore Olds, daughter of Senator Thomas P. Gore from Oklahoma, former wife of Eugene L. Vidal, and mother of the writer Gore Vidal. Following an extended legal battle, Auchincloss and Nina were divorced in September 1941.
That same year he began dating Janet Lee Bouvier, a divorcée with two daughters, Jacqueline and Lee. They were married in June 1942.