The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax 

 HENRY BRECKINRIDGE  1886 - 1960

Henry Breckinridge was Lindbergh's lawyer.  He telephoned Henry before calling the State Police about his missing child on March 1, 1932.

Also See  Robert Thayer   and  Mickey  Rosner

  Breckinridge Runs For President      Aida De Acosta Root

 Henry Breckinridge  May 1886 - May 1960 

Breckinridge, Henry, lawyer, .was born in Chicago, ILL., May 25, 1886, son of Joseph Cabell and Louise Ludlow (Dudley) Breckinridge. 

His first paternal American ancestor was Alexander Breckinridge, a native of Northern Ireland of Scotch ancestry, who came to this country in 1728 and settled in Pennsylvania, but later, in 1740, moved to Augusta County, VA. From him and his wife, Jane, the descent was through Robert and Letitia Preston, John and Mary Hopkins Cabell, and Robert Jefferson and Ann Sophonisba, who were the grandparents of Henry Breckinridge. His father was a U.S. Army officer. 

The son was graduated B.A. at Princeton University in 1907 and LL.B. at Harvard University in 1910. Admitted to the Kentucky bar in the latter year, he practiced his profession in Lexington for three years. In 1913 he was named the assistant secretary of war during the first term of Woodrow Wilson (q.v.), and while serving in that post he took $3,000,000 in gold abroad on the cruiser “Tennessee” for the relief of United States citizens stranded in the warring countries. 

In 1916 both he and the secretary of war tendered their resignations. He then served as first vice-president of the Pacific Hardware & Steel Co., San Francisco, Calif., in 1916-1917. With the entry of the United States into the First World War, Breckinridge was commissioned major in the U.S. Army Infantry and during his service was advanced to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

 He went overseas with the AEF as a battalion commander and saw action in the Vosges, St. Michel, and Meuse-Argonne sectors. Honorably discharged in 1919, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., until 1922. He then moved to New York city, where he conducted a law practice until the close of his life. 

He was attorney for Charles A. Lindbergh and participated as an intermediary in the futile ransom negotiations for the return of the Lindbergh child, who had been kidnapped in 1932. Breckinridge took part in numerous civic and political activities. He was president of the Navy League of the United States from 1919 to 1921 and at that time organized the first Navy Day, which was celebrated in 1920. In 1933 he was counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters. He entered the Democratic preferential primaries under the auspices of the Association for the Defense of the Constitution in four states in 1936, to challenge the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (q.v.), and in the campaign that fall he gave support to the Republican candidate, Alfred M. Landon. 

He was the author of “. . .shall not perish . . .” (1941), a book resulting from his vigorous support of the United States intervention in the Second World War on the side of Great Britain and France. Honorary LL.D. degrees were conferred on him by the University of Kentucky in 1915 and Tusculum College, Greeneville, Tenn., in 1935, an honorary Master of Physical Education degree by the International YMCA College in 1929, and an honorary D.C.L. degree by Bishops' University, Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada in 1940. 

He was a member of the American, New York State, and New York County bar associations, American Law Institute, Amateur Fencers League of America (pres. 1925-30), Sons of the American Revolution, Military Order of the World War, American Legion, Loyal Legion, the Metropolitan and the Army and Navy clubs of Washington, D.C., and the Princeton and Fencers clubs of New York city. 

His religious affiliation was with the Presbyterian church. Fencing was one of his early interests, and he was a member of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team competing in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920 and captain of the same team in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1928, and in 1921, 1923, and 1926 he was a member of the American International Fencing Team. Playing tennis was another of his recreations. Breckinridge was married three times: (1) in Geneva, Switzerland, July 7, 1910, to Ruth Bradley, daughter of Edgar Woodman of Concord, N.H., a lawyer, and by this marriage had two daughters: Elizabeth Foster, who married John Stephens Graham, and Louise Dudley; he was divorced from his first wife in 1925; (2) in Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 1927, to Aida de Acosta Root; he was divorced from his second wife in 1947; (3) in Carson City, Nev., Mar. 27, 1947, to Margaret Lucy, daughter of John Raymond Smith of Gloucestershire, England, a horticulturist, and by this marriage had a daughter, Madeline Houston. 

His death occurred in New York City, May 2, 1960.

 Henry Breckinridge, former Assistant Secretary of War was a founder of the anti-New Deal American Liberty League but later became a supporter of the fight against Nazism and Hitler, unlike his friend and client, Charles A Lindbergh. 

He stated: "If Hitler makes one move to touch Iceland or Greenland, the United States should immediately occupy them and loose its sea and air power upon the Nazi bandit whose victory would mean the end of all civilized freedom in the world."

"During the eight years of the Wilson Administration there were four Assistant Secretaries. The first of these, Henry S. Breckinridge ( 1913-16), was a young Kentucky lawyer, twenty-six years old when appointed. Only three years out of Harvard Law School, he had no prior military connection and had held no previous public office."

Arthur W. Macmahon, John D. Millett; Columbia University Press, 1939

Federal Administrators: A Biographical Approach to the Problem of Departmental Management

 Breckinridge Runs For President!  1936

 Mrs Henry Breckinridge # 2 1927 - 1947 

Aida de Acosta Breckinridge lost the sight of one eye from glaucoma. In honor of her ophthalmologist, William H. Wilmer, she founded the Wilmer Opthalmological Institute at Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1929. One of his students suggested that an eye bank to supply corneal tissue would be valuable. Although some fifteen thousand Americans, it was thought, could have sight through corneal transplants, the acquisition of an eye was a matter of luck. Breckinridge followed the suggestion and founded the Eye Bank. She was its director from 1945 to 1955. Eye banks have since been established in many cities.

Breckinridge has another claim to fame. In 1903 she made a solo flight over Paris, France, in a balloon. When she landed she was greeted, "Mademoiselle, you are the world's first woman pilot." Her society parents were not pleased. In fact, they were shocked and kept the whole thing a secret until 1932, when the feat was made public. ²¹

Aida De Acosta 1903  Bagatelle