National Affairs: I, John Foster Dulles

Probated in Manhattan the day after John Foster Dulles’ funeral was a final official document: his will. Drawn ten months earlier, it left to Janet Dulles the bulk of her husband’s estate, valued for probate purposes at “over $20,000.” In addition, specific bequests to relatives and friends totaled $235,000.

Elder Son John Watson Foster Dulles, a mining engineer in Mexico City, will receive $100,000 and, at his mother’s death, half her estate. Daughter Lillias Dulles Hinshaw, wife of a Manhattan publicist and a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, will receive the other half of Janet Dulles’ estate, also gets $10,000 outright, plus forgiveness of a mortgage held by her father. Dulles’ three sisters are each to get $10,000; William C. Pierce and Henry N. Ess III, his law partners in the Manhattan firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, will get $25,000 each. To his second son, Avery Dulles, went only $5,000, “not because of any lack of affection for him, but because of special circumstances.” The circumstances: as a member of the Jesuit order, the Rev. Avery Dulles is bound by a vow of poverty.*

John Foster Dulles’ personal papers, along with $10,000, were left to Princeton University’s aborning John Foster Dulles Library of Diplomatic History.

* And under the rules of his order, he may not receive the bequest. He may 1) turn it over to the Society of Jesus, or 2 ) return it to the estate.