Winthrop W. Aldrich

Winthrop Williams Aldrich (November 2, 1885 – February 25, 1974) was an American banker and financier, scion of a prominent and powerful political family, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Early years Aldrich was born in Rhode Island in 1885, to Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and the former Abigail Pearce Truman Chapman. He attended Harvard University, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1907 and a J.D. degree in 1910. Among his ten siblings was brother Richard S. Aldrich, who served in Congress from 1923 to 1933, and sisters Lucy Aldrich, an art collector, and Abby Aldrich, who became the wife of financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Business career Aldrich served as president and chairman of the board of Chase National Bank from 1930 to 1953. He served as commodore of the New York Yacht Club from 1932 to 1934. In 1946, his nephew David Rockefeller joined Chase National Bank and would later become the chairman. During and after World War II, as president of the British War Relief Society and the National War Fund Inc., he supported relief efforts and financial assistance to the United Kingdom and Europe. For this work he received the King's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom and in 1947 was invested by King George VI as an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire (GBE). He belonged to and served on the boards of many charitable organizations. who married Sheldon Whitehouse in 1920. Together, they were the parents of: Harriet Aldrich (1922–2014), who married Dr. Edgar A. Bering Jr. Lucy Truman Aldrich, who married David Wetmore Devens, a son Arthur Lithgow Devens III, in 1945. They divorced and she remarried to her first cousin, George Davenport Aldrich, in 1971. After his death, she married lawyer Francis Hooks Burr in 1979. Alexander "Sam" Aldrich (1928–2017), who married Elizabeth Hollins Elliott and, later, Phyllis Williamson and served as the Commissioner of the Office of Parks and Recreation of New York State. Elizabeth Brewster "Liberty" Aldrich, who married J. Woodward Redmond in 1946.

He was an amateur musician and an artist whose specialty was watercolor seascapes. As a yachtsman he was navigator, under skipper Harold S. Vanderbilt, of the 1930 America's Cup J Class defender Enterprise. He built a 40-room manor on 108 acres in Brookville on Long Island.

Aldrich died at his home, 960 Fifth Avenue in New York City, on February 25, 1974. and the exclusive and prestigious Pilgrims Society.