PoliticalGraveyard.com
The Political Graveyard: A Database of American History
Foster-Dulles family of Watertown and New York City, New York

Note: This is just one of 1,325 family groupings listed on The Political Graveyard web site. These families each have three or more politician members, all linked together by blood, marriage or adoption.

This specific family group is a subset of the much larger Four Thousand Related Politicians group. An individual may be listed with more than one subset.

These groupings — even the names of the groupings, and the areas of main activity — are the result of a computer algorithm working with the data I have, not the choices of any historian or genealogist.

John W. Foster John Watson Foster (1836-1917) — also known as John W. Foster — of Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Ind.; Washington, D.C. Born in Pike County, Ind., March 2, 1836. Republican. Lawyer; colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War; newspaper editor; alternate delegate to Republican National Convention from Indiana, 1868; postmaster at Evansville, Ind., 1869-73; Indiana Republican state chair, 1872; U.S. Minister to Mexico, 1873-80; Russia, 1880-81; Spain, 1883-85; U.S. Secretary of State, 1892-93. Presbyterian. Member, Loyal Legion. Died in Washington, D.C., November 15, 1917 (age 81 years, 258 days). Interment at Oak Hill Cemetery, Evansville, Ind.
  Relatives: Son of Matthew Watson Foster and Eleanor (Johnson) Foster; married 1859 to Mary Parke McFerson; father of Eleanor Foster (who married Robert Lansing); grandfather of John Foster Dulles and Allen Welsh Dulles.
  Political families: Lansing family of Albany, New York; Foster-Dulles family of Watertown and New York City, New York (subsets of the Four Thousand Related Politicians).
  The World War II Liberty ship SS John W. Foster (built 1943 at Richmond, California; scrapped 1971) was named for him.
  See also Wikipedia article — U.S. State Dept career summary — Find-A-Grave memorial
  Image source: Life and Work of James G. Blaine (1893)
  Robert Lansing (1864-1928) — of Watertown, Jefferson County, N.Y. Born in Watertown, Jefferson County, N.Y., October 17, 1864. Lawyer; U.S. Secretary of State, 1915-20. Member, American Political Science Association; Psi Upsilon. Died, of myocarditis, in Washington, D.C., October 30, 1928 (age 64 years, 13 days). Interment at Brookside Cemetery, Watertown, N.Y.
  Relatives: Son of John Lansing and Maria Lay (Dodge) Lansing; brother of Emma Sterling Lansing; married, January 15, 1890, to Eleanor Foster (daughter of John Watson Foster); grandson of Robert Lansing (1799-1878); grandnephew of Frederick Lansing (1806-1861); great-grandnephew of John Ten Eyck Lansing Jr. and Abraham Gerritse Lansing; first cousin once removed of Frederick Lansing (1838-1894); first cousin twice removed of Gerrit Yates Lansing; second cousin of Stuart Douglas Lansing; second cousin once removed of Abraham Lansing and Agnes Phelps Blake; second cousin four times removed of Abraham Jacob Lansing; third cousin thrice removed of Cornelius Lansing.
  Political families: Lansing family of Albany, New York; Foster-Dulles family of Watertown and New York City, New York (subsets of the Four Thousand Related Politicians).
  Cross-reference: Richard Crane — Thomas Burke
  See also Wikipedia article — NNDB dossier — Find-A-Grave memorial
John Foster Dulles John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) — of Manhattan, New York County, N.Y. Born in Washington, D.C., February 25, 1888. Republican. Lawyer; major in the U.S. Army during World War I; delegate to Republican National Convention from New York, 1944; U.S. Senator from New York, 1949; defeated, 1949; U.S. Secretary of State, 1953-59. Presbyterian. Member, Phi Beta Kappa; Phi Delta Phi; Council on Foreign Relations. Received the Medal of Freedom in 1959. Died of cancer and pneumonia, in Washington, D.C., May 24, 1959 (age 71 years, 88 days). Interment at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.
  Relatives: Son of Allen Macy Dulles and Edith F. (Foster) Dulles; brother of Allen Welsh Dulles; married, June 26, 1912, to Janet Pomeroy Avery; grandson of John Watson Foster; great-grandnephew of John Welsh; third great-grandnephew of Joshua Coit; first cousin twice removed of Langdon Cheves Jr.; first cousin six times removed of Benjamin Huntington; second cousin once removed of Samuel Welsh; second cousin thrice removed of Robert Coit Jr.; second cousin four times removed of Jabez Huntington, John Davenport, James Davenport, Henry Huntington, Gurdon Huntington and Abel Huntington; second cousin five times removed of Samuel Huntington; third cousin of Lewis Wardlaw Haskell; third cousin twice removed of Alonzo Mark Leffingwell and William Brainard Coit; third cousin thrice removed of Jedediah Huntington, Ebenezer Huntington, William Woodbridge, Zina Hyde Jr., Isaac Backus, Theodore Davenport, Henry Titus Backus and Benjamin Nicoll Huntington; fourth cousin once removed of John Leffingwell Randolph.
  Political family: Foster-Dulles family of Watertown and New York City, New York (subset of the Four Thousand Related Politicians).
  Cross-reference: Edward F. Corsi
  Washington Dulles International Airport (opened 1962), in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, Virginia, is named for him.
  See also congressional biography — Govtrack.us page — Wikipedia article — NNDB dossier — Find-A-Grave memorial — Arlington National Cemetery unofficial website
  Image source: Time Magazine, August 13, 1951
  Allen Welsh Dulles (1893-1969) — also known as Allen W. Dulles; "Spymaster" — of Auburn, Cayuga County, N.Y.; Manhattan, New York County, N.Y. Born in Watertown, Jefferson County, N.Y., April 7, 1893. Republican. Foreign Service officer; lawyer; candidate for U.S. Representative from New York 16th District, 1938; delegate to Republican National Convention from New York, 1940; director, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 1953-61; member, President's Commission on the Assassination of President KNDY, 1963-64. Presbyterian. Member, Council on Foreign Relations. Died, from influenza and pneumonia, in Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1969 (age 75 years, 296 days). Interment at Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Md.
  Relatives: Son of Allen Macy Dulles and Edith F. (Foster) Dulles; brother of John Foster Dulles; married 1920 to Clover Todd; grandson of John Watson Foster; great-grandnephew of John Welsh; third great-grandnephew of Joshua Coit; first cousin twice removed of Langdon Cheves Jr.; first cousin six times removed of Benjamin Huntington; second cousin once removed of Samuel Welsh; second cousin thrice removed of Robert Coit Jr.; second cousin four times removed of Jabez Huntington, John Davenport, James Davenport, Henry Huntington, Gurdon Huntington and Abel Huntington; second cousin five times removed of Samuel Huntington; third cousin of Lewis Wardlaw Haskell; third cousin twice removed of Alonzo Mark Leffingwell and William Brainard Coit; third cousin thrice removed of Jedediah Huntington, Ebenezer Huntington, William Woodbridge, Zina Hyde Jr., Isaac Backus, Theodore Davenport, Henry Titus Backus and Benjamin Nicoll Huntington; fourth cousin once removed of John Leffingwell Randolph.
  Political family: Foster-Dulles family of Watertown and New York City, New York (subset of the Four Thousand Related Politicians).
  See also Wikipedia article — Find-A-Grave memorial

"Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard."
Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872
The Political Graveyard

The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 338,260 politicians, living and dead.
 
  The coverage of this site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, members of major federal commissions; and political appointee (pre-1969) postmasters of qualifying communities; (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions; (6) Americans who served as "honorary" consuls for other nations before 1950. Note: municipalities or communities "qualify", for Political Graveyard purposes, if they have at least half a million person-years of history, inclusive of predecessor, successor, and merged entities.  
  The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.  
  Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.  
  The official URL for this page is: https://politicalgraveyard.com/families/10001-1328.html.  
  Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.  
  If you are searching for a specific named individual, try the alphabetical index of politicians.  
Copyright notices: (1) Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. (2) Politician portraits displayed on this site are 70-pixel-wide monochrome thumbnail images, which I believe to constitute fair use under applicable copyright law. Where possible, each image is linked to its online source. However, requests from owners of copyrighted images to delete them from this site are honored. (3) Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2025 Lawrence Kestenbaum. (4) This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.
What is a "political graveyard"? See Political Dictionary; Urban Dictionary.
Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDLmi.com. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on February 17, 2025.