John N. Mitchell’s wife, Martha Elizabeth Beall Mitchell, died on May 31, 1976.
She was married to John N. Mitchell, who served as attorney general of the United States under President Richard Nixon. She was honest and revealing in her public remarks and interviews throughout the Watergate crisis.
On New Year’s Eve 1966, John Mitchell and Richard Nixon’s legal careers intersected when their law firms merged to form Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander and Mitchell. Despite their friendship, when Nixon was elected president in 1968, he nominated John Mitchell as his Attorney General. The post required the family to relocate to Washington, D.C., and their home in the “fashionable” Watergate complex was valued at US$140,000 at the time.
Mitchell initially gained national prominence when she told a television reporter that the November 1969 peace demonstrations in Washington, D.C. reminded her husband of the Russian Revolution. The statement improved her reputation and media coverage. Mitchell had a habit of drinking in the evening and then calling reporters with political gossip or information she had obtained through rummaging through her husband’s documents or listening in on his discussions. Mitchell’s reputation as an outspoken socialite increased during this period, and she made regular appearances on television talk shows and variety shows like Laugh-In.
Who was Martha Mitchell’s second husband John N. Mitchell?
She previously stated that she was “impressed with his suaveness and intellect” the moment she met John N. Mitchell. On December 30, 1957, they married and settled in Rye, New York. Her new husband was a Manhattan lawyer who earned $250,000 a year, and the couple bought a home on the grounds of the Apawamis Club. Marty Mitchell was born in 1961 to the Mitchells. Despite the fact that the Mitchells were not Catholics, they enrolled their daughter in a Catholic school because Mitchell believed it had superior discipline.
