Francis Abbot Goodhue

Francis Abott Goodhue Jr. (June 14, 1883 – June 1963)

In 1929, he was elected president of the American Acceptance Council which had been founded by Paul Warburg in 1919. In 1931, he was succeeded by Charles S. McCain, chairman of the board of the Chase National Bank.

When International Acceptance merged with the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1931, he became president of the combined bank serving in that role until his retirement in 1948 when he was succeeded by Lawrence C. Marshall.

Volunteer and philanthropic efforts In 1918, Goodhue served as one of three representing the United States on the Interallied Committee for War, Purchases and Finance in London. In 1932, he began serving on the American Committee on Standstill Credits to Germany. He resigned in 1939 because the bank had no longer had any outstanding debts under the agreement.

In 1937, he accepted the chairmanship of the finance section in the United Hospitals Campaign. In that role, he directed the work of nineteen major solicitation groups on behalf of the ninety-two voluntary hospitals in the fund and the Visiting Nurse Association of Brooklyn.

In 1942, Governor Herbert H. Lehman nominated Goodhue to replace Mortimer N. Buckner on the State Banking Board, Group 1, which acted as an advisory "cabinet" to the New York State Superintendent of Banks. Group 1 was originally reserved for nominees of the ten banks with deposits of more than $150,000,000 when it was established in 1932.

After his retirement from the Manhattan Company in 1948, he continued to serve on the board until 1955 when the bank was merged with the Chase National Bank becoming the Chase Manhattan Bank. Goodhue served as a member of the bank's trust advisory board until his death in 1963. Her paternal grandparents were banker Nathaniel Thayer Jr. and Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (a daughter of Stephen Van Rensselaer IV). Together, they were the parents of:

Francis Abott Goodhue III (1916–1990), a Harvard Law School graduate who married Mary Elizabeth Brier, a daughter of Ernest Brier of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a vice president of the Parke‐Davis Company, in 1948. Mary, also a lawyer, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1975 and the New York State Senate in 1979. Phoebe Thayer Goodhue (1919–2019), who had her debut in 1937 at the Corinthian Room of The Pierre. She married Lt. Warren Winslow (1918–1944) in 1942. After his death in January 1944 while serving with the U.S. Navy, she married Gerrish H. Milliken Jr. (1917–2015), a brother of Roger Milliken, grandson of Seth M. Milliken of Milliken & Company, and great-grandson of Seth L. Milliken, in 1946. John Thayer Goodhue (1925-2024), a vice president of international sales with the West India Shipping Company in New York, who married Charlotte Barton Streeter (1927–2013), a daughter of Edward Streeter, in 1949. Stephen Van Rensselaer Goodhue (1929–2011), a former senior vice president with Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and president of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York who married Judith (née Relles) Wiener, a daughter of Nathan Relles, in 1986.

Goodhue died of a heart attack at his home, 16 Ives Road, Hewlett on Long Island, in June 1963. They also had a home in Lancaster.

Descendants Through his son Francis, he was a grandfather of Francis Abott Goodhue IV, who married Evelyn Treat Cutler, a daughter of Philip Cutler of Dresden Mills, Maine (the founding headmaster of the Brookwood School in Manchester-by-the-Sea), in 1976.