Amos Richards Eno Pinchot (1872-1944)

He was born in Paris to American parents and named for his maternal grandfather, Amos R. Eno, one of New York's wealthiest real estate developers. He was educated at St. Paul's School, Concord; Yale University (1897); and, Columbia Law School. He interrupted his law course to enlist with the 1st New York Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish-American War, serving in Puerto Rico. In 1899, he enrolled at the New York Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1900.

He apprenticed as a lobbyist for Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 and returned to Washington four years later to support his brother, Gifford, in the Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy that divided the Republican Party and led the brothers to co-found the Progressive Party with Roosevelt. Between 1911 and 1917, Amos funded The Masses a socialist magazine which was eventually shut down on charges that it was conspiring to obstruct conscription during WWI. Roosevelt and his brother Gifford soon tired of his hard leftist views and when they rejoined the Republican Party, he went over to the Democrats. His later career was marked by his strong isolationist views, alienating him from many serious politicians.

In 1900, he married Gertrude, daughter of the shipping magnate Robert Bowne Minturn Jr., and sister-in-law of Edith (Minturn) Stokes who with her husband, Newton Phelps Stokes, shared Amos' hard leftist views. They regularly attended the socialist gatherings held at the Phelps-Stokes' Brick House and had two children before divorcing in 1918. The following year he married the politically active Ruth Pickering who also embraced his leftist views, notably as an isolationist with America First. They had two further daughters, including Mary Pinchot Meyer, ex-wife of a CIA official who then became a lover of JFK and whose unresolved murder in 1964 is the subject of several books. In 1938, Pinchot's eldest daughter, the actress Rosamond Pinchot, committed suicide which sent him into a deep depression and in 1942 he attempted to take his own life by slashing his wrists. Physically and mentally his health never recovered and he died two years later.