Frank Polk

Frank Lyon Polk (September 13, 1871 – February 7, 1943) was a prominent United States lawyer and a name partner of the law firm today known as Davis Polk & Wardwell, and for some years held prominent diplomatic positions.

Polk was born on September 13, 1871, in New York City, son of William Mecklenburg Polk (1844–1918), dean of the Cornell Medical School, and grandson of bishop and Confederate general Leonidas Polk (1806–1864), who was a cousin of President James K. Polk.

He graduated from Yale College (B.A., 1894) and Columbia University Law School (LL.B., 1897). He was a member of the Scroll and Key Society.

In 1897, Polk began his law practice in New York City. He served on a variety of City boards and commissions. He was member of the civil service commission of New York from 1907 to 1909, and in 1907 and 1910 was a member of the New York City Board of Education. On January 24, 1914, Mayor Mitchel appointed him corporation counsel, in which office he remained until his appointment on September 16, 1915, as counselor for the United States Department of State at Washington, D.C., confirmed by the Senate on December 17, 1915.

He served in the Department of State as Counselor until 1919, and then as Acting Secretary of State (1920) and Under Secretary of State (1919–1920). Polk headed the American Commission to Negotiate Peace (1919), and after President Wilson's and Secretary Lansing's departure from Paris in 1919, he represented the United States at the peace conference. He managed the 1924 Democratic presidential convention campaign of John W. Davis, another name partner of his law firm.

Polk was married to Elizabeth Sturgis Potter (1886-1950). Elizabeth was the daughter of James Potter (d. 1934), the Cunard Line representative in Philadelphia, and Elizabeth (Sturgis) Potter (d. 1942). The Polks lived at 6 East Sixty-eighth Street in New York City, had a home in Syosset on Long Island and in Boca Grande, Florida. Together they had five children:

• John Metcalfe Polk (1908-1948), who married Virginia Brand, daughter of Robert Brand, 1st Baron Brand and niece of Lady Astor, in 1939.
• Elizabeth Potter Polk (1910-1990), who married Raymond R. Guest (1907–1991), the son of Frederick Guest (1875–1937), in 1935.
• Frank Lyon Polk, Jr. (1911-1952), who married Katherine H. Salvage, the eldest daughter of Samuel Agar Salvage (1876-1946), in 1934.
• James Potter Polk, who married Margaret S. Salvage, another daughter of Samuel Agar Salvage, in 1937.
• Alice Polk (1917-2009), who married Winthrop Rutherford (d. 1988), in 1940.

His portrait was painted by Sir Oswald Birley in 1923.

Polk served on a variety of New York City boards and commissions (1906-1913) and as Corporation Counsel (1914-1915). He also served in the Department of State as Counselor (1915-1919), Acting Secretary of State (1918-1919), and Under Secretary of State (1919-1920). Polk headed the American Mission to Negotiate Peace (1919) and managed the 1924 Democratic presidential convention campaign of John W. Davis.

Frank Lyon Polk died on February 7, 1943, in New York City.

Descendants

Polk is the grandfather of financier Lewis Polk Rutherfurd (b. 1944) who was married to Janet Jennings Auchincloss, the half-sister of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, from 1966 until her death in 1985.