Janet Morris, Mother of Jacqueline Onassis, Dies

Janet Lee Auchincloss Morris, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, died Saturday night after a long illness at Hammersmith Farm, the family estate. Mrs. Morris, 81, had been suffering Alzheimer’s disease.

Both Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill Ross, the wife of Hollywood producer Herbert Ross, were at their mother’s bedside when she died. Mrs. Morris had been a leading member of society in Newport, R.I., and Washington, D.C., for many years.

Mrs. Morris married stockbroker John V. Bouvier III on July 7, 1928. After the birth of their two daughters, the marriage ended in divorce in 1940.

She married Washington financier Hugh D. Auchincloss, the father of three, on June 21, 1942. The couple had two children, Janet Auchincloss Rutherford, who died in 1985, and James Auchincloss. Hugh Auchincloss died in 1976.

The sprawling estate of Hammersmith Farm was the site of the wedding on Sept. 12, 1953, of the then young Life society photographer Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy, then the junior senator from Massachusetts.

Morris is survived by her husband, Bingham W. Morris, whom she married several years ago after the death of Auchincloss. She also leaves a sister, Winifred d’Olier of Villanova, Pa., her three children, three stepchildren, 14 grandchildren and stepgrandchildren and a great-granddaughter.