Joseph Medill McCormick (May 16, 1877 – February 25, 1925) was part of the McCormick family of businessmen and politicians in Chicago. After working as a publisher for some time and becoming part owner of the Chicago Tribune, which his maternal grandfather had owned, he entered politics.
After serving in the State House, he was elected both as a Representative in the United States Congress and later as a US Senator from Illinois.
In 1903 he married Ruth Hanna, daughter of the Ohio Senator Mark Hanna. They had three children:
Ruth "Bazy" McCormick, (1921–2013) who married Peter Miller and then Garvin Tankersley. As Bazy Miller, she founded Al-Marah Arabians, a breeding and training farm for Arabian horses formerly in Tucson, Arizona, which operates in Florida, under the ownership of her son, Mark Miller.[2]
Katrina McCormick (1913–2011), who married Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Jr.[3]
John Medill McCormick, called "Johnny", died in a mountain-climbing accident in 1938.
The Chicago Tribune
McCormick was a grandson of the Tribune owner Joseph Medill. His mother Katherine Medill McCormick hoped that leadership of the paper would pass from her brother-in-law, Robert Wilson Patterson, to her first son. Joseph Medill McCormick took over much of the management of the paper between 1903 and 1907, but became increasingly depressed and developed alcoholism. In 1907–1908, he spent some time under the care of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung in Zurich, and subsequently followed Jung's advice to detach himself from the family newspaper.[4]
His younger brother, the famed "Colonel" Robert McCormick (1880–1955) became involved in the newspaper, worked closely on it for four decades, and was a leading isolationist figure in the Republican Party.[5]
McCormick died on February 25, 1925, in his hotel suite at the Hamilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.[7] Although it was not publicized at the time, his death was considered to be a suicide. At the time of his death, McCormick was about to leave office. His reelection loss is believed to have contributed to his apparent suicide.[8][9][10][11][12]
