Ogden L. Mills

Ogden Livingston Mills (August 23, 1884 – October 11, 1937) was an American lawyer, businessman and politician. He served as United States Secretary of the Treasury in President Herbert Hoover's cabinet, during which time Mills pushed for tax increases, spending cuts and other austerity measures that would deepen the economic crisis. A member of the Republican Party, Mills also represented New York in the United States House of Representatives, served as

Undersecretary of the Treasury during the administration of President Calvin Coolidge, and was the Republican nominee in the 1926 New York gubernatorial election.

Mills was born on August 23, 1884, in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of Ogden Mills (1856–1929), a financier and racehorse owner, and his wife, the former Ruth T. Livingston (1855–1920), granddaughter of Maturin Livingston (1769–1847). He had twin sisters, Beatrice Mills Forbes (1883–1972) and Gladys Mills Phipps (1883–1970), and was the grandson of the banker Darius Ogden Mills.

Mills graduated from Harvard University in 1904, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1907. He was admitted to the bar in 1908.

Mills and his sister Gladys owned Wheatley Stable, a horse racing and breeding operation. Their stable owned and bred Seabiscuit as well as Bold Ruler, whose offspring includes Secretariat.

Mills also owned Kantar who won the 1928 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

After his father's death in 1929, Mills and each of his sisters received $12,197,034 from their father's estate.

Mills was a delegate to the 1912, 1916 and 1920 Republican National Conventions. He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1915 to 1917, sitting in the 138th, 139th and 140th New York State Legislatures, and was the Chairman of the Committee on Affairs of the New York City, New York in 1917.

He resigned his seat on July 31, 1917 to enlist in the United States Army, and served with the rank of captain until the close of World War I.

On September 20, 1911, Mills married his first wife, Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd (1891–1976), the daughter of Anne Harriman Rutherfurd and Lewis Morris Rutherfurd Jr. At the time of their wedding, she was the step-daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt and the granddaughter of Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816–1892) and Oliver Harriman (1829–1904). They divorced in 1919. In 1922, she married Sir Paul Henry Dukes (1889–1967). They divorced in 1929 and, later that same year, she married Prince Charles Michel Joachim Napoléon (1892–1973), son of Joachim, 5th Prince Murat. They also divorced and in 1939, she married Frederick Leybourne Sprague.

On September 2, 1924, Mills married his second wife, Dorothy (née Randolph) Fell (d. 1968), the former wife of banker John R. Fell.