Representative Richard Steere Aldrich

Richard Steere Aldrich (February 29, 1884 – December 25, 1941) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island from 1923 to 1933, following earlier service in both the Rhode Island House of Representatives and the Rhode Island State Senate. His decade in Congress spanned a significant period in American history, encompassing the prosperity of the 1920s and the onset of the Great Depression, during which he contributed to the legislative process over five consecutive terms.

Aldrich was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, Nelson W. Aldrich, was serving in Congress. He was born into a prominent political and financial family descended from early American figures including John Winthrop, William Wickenden, Roger Williams, and John Steere. His father, Nelson W. Aldrich, became one of the most influential Republican leaders in the United States Senate, serving from 1881 to 1911 and playing a major role in national fiscal and tariff policy. His mother was Abby Pearce Chapman. Aldrich’s siblings and extended family were likewise notable: his sister Abigail Greene “Abby” Aldrich was a philanthropist who married financier and philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller Jr.; their second son, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, later served four terms as Governor of New York, sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968, and was appointed Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford in 1974. Another brother, Winthrop Williams Aldrich, served as chairman of the Chase National Bank, and his nephew David Rockefeller would eventually become that bank’s chairman.

Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Aldrich attended the city’s public schools and graduated from Hope Street High School in 1902. He continued his education at Yale University, receiving his degree in 1906, and went on to study law at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1909. This combination of elite education and a politically engaged family background prepared him for a career that would bridge both law and public service.

In 1911, Aldrich was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law in New York City. After two years in New York, he returned to Rhode Island in 1913 and continued his legal practice in Providence. He later moved to Warwick, Rhode Island, where he became increasingly active in state politics. On April 30, 1921, he married Janet Innis White; the couple had a son, also named Richard Steere Aldrich. His growing prominence in public life was reflected not only in his elective offices but also in his membership, beginning in July 1923, in the Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, underscoring his connection to longstanding American civic and historical traditions.

Aldrich’s formal political career began in the Rhode Island General Assembly. He served as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 1914 to 1916 and then in the Rhode Island State Senate from 1916 to 1918. In these roles he participated in state-level legislative deliberations during the World War I era, helping to represent the interests of his constituents and to shape state policy at a time of national mobilization and social change.

Building on his state legislative experience, Aldrich was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-eighth Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1923, to March 3, 1933. As a member of the House of Representatives, he participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of Rhode Island constituents during a transformative decade in American political and economic life. While in Congress, he took positions on major national issues, including speaking out against the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any given country. His opposition to this restrictive measure distinguished him from many contemporaries in his party who supported the legislation. After five terms in office, Aldrich chose not to be a candidate for renomination in 1932, concluding his congressional service at the end of the Seventy-second Congress.

Following his departure from Congress, Aldrich resumed the practice of law in Providence, returning to the profession that had anchored his career before and between his periods of public service. He continued his legal work there until his death in Providence on December 25, 1941. He was interred in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island. Throughout his life, Richard Steere Aldrich embodied the intersection of a distinguished political lineage, rigorous legal training, and a decade of federal legislative service during one of the most consequential periods in early twentieth-century American history.