Bouvier family

The Bouvier family or Bouvier-Lee-Auchincloss family describes the wealthy, American family connected with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (nee Bouvier). It was founded in the United States around 1820 and joined the American upper class over subsequent years. Members of the family have French, Irish and English ancestry.

History
Michel Bouvier, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, was a French cabinet maker who immigrated to Philadelphia in 1815. By the time of his death, he had become wealthy, owning a cabinet-making business and large lands which contained coal reserves.

His sons John Vernou Bouvier Sr. and Michel “M.C.” Bouvier worked on Wall Street, relocating to New York and further growing the family fortune.

John Vernou Bouvier Jr. was born in 1866 and inherited $250,000 (equivalent to over $4 million today) from the family, some of which he lost in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He was also a successful attorney.

John Vernou Bouvier III, the son of J. V. Bouvier Jr married Janet Norton Lee in 1928. Her father was James Thomas Lee, who came from another prominent Manhattan family. His father, Dr. James Lee, was the superintendent of New York Public Schools, as well as a local physician. Lee became a lawyer in the real estate industry, before investing in real estate successfully and developing several luxury buildings in Manhattan, including the Peter Stuyvesant Apartments. John III and Janet had two daughters, Jacqueline, who married John F. Kennedy in 1953 and later Aristotle Onassis and Lee, who married Michael Temple Canfield, Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł and Herbert Ross. Janet later married stockbroker and lawyer Hugh D. Auchincloss Jr., the son of Hugh D. Auchincloss Sr. and a stepfather of Gore Vidal. Their marriage produced Janet Auchincloss Rutherfurd, who married Lewis Polk Rutherfurd, grandson of Levi P. Morton, former Vice President of the United States.

John Vernou Bouvier Jr’s daughter Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale married Phelan Beale. They had children: Bouvier Beale, Phelan Beale Jr. and Edith Bouvier Beale.

In 1975 Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter “Little Edie” were the subjects of a documentary called Grey Gardens. It documented their day-to-day lives living in the dilapidated Grey Gardens mansion with raccoons and cats in increasing squalor.

They are most known for their connection with the Kennedy family.

Residences
The residence most commonly associated with the family is Lasata, the home of John Vernou Bouvier Jr. in East Hampton, New York.