Katharine Lawrence Auchincloss

Katharine L. Auchincloss, who held leadership roles in educational and cultural institutions and helped revitalize the New Jersey Historical Society in the 1990s, died Monday. Mrs. Auchincloss, formerly of Ridgewood, was 90.

Katharine L. Auchincloss led the state historical society.

"I’ve always been quite a nut about history," she told The Record in 1989 when the New Jersey Historical Society, the non-profit museum, library and archive in Newark, made her chairwoman. "My mother used to take me around to all the museums, and I was just fascinated by them."

Mrs. Auchincloss brought sorely needed connections and a personal link to American history to the society, which was founded in 1845. She was descended from Boston’s powerful Lowell family on her mother’s side. Her father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was assistant secretary of state in the early 1930s and special assistant to the secretary of war during World War II.

Her brothers, McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, were advisers to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. And her surgeon husband, Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, was a cousin of the stepfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

As the first woman to lead the New Jersey Historical Society, Mrs. Auchincloss — previously a trustee of Columbia and Fairleigh Dickinson universities and a member of the New Jersey Board of Education — recruited a former Treasury secretary and a former Goldman Sachs partner to head up fundraising. She also steered the museum from a fading building in north Newark to a handsome former men’s club on Park Place downtown, steps from where the New Jersey Performing Arts Center was being built.

On several occasions, Record op-ed columnist James Ahearn, a society member, characterized Mrs. Auchincloss as the organization’s savior. Mrs. Auchincloss twice wrote a letter to the editor saying Ahearn gave her too much credit.

Her son, Dr. Hugh Auchincloss III, said that sounds like his mother.

"Her biggest advantage is she knew people and people knew who she was," he said. "Because of that, she had the opportunity to do good things. … She just wanted to do good for the world, and things came her way."

Steven Tettamanti, executive director of the New Jersey Historical Society, said Wednesday that Mrs. Auchincloss’s leadership "played a critical role in the success of the society during a challenging period."

"She was the driving force in the successful fundraising that brought the society to its current location, giving the research library, exhibits and education programs a new and important home" in an area of Newark that has become a cultural hub, he added.

Boston-born Katharine Lawrence Auchincloss, known as Laurie, left Radcliffe College at the outbreak of World War II. She married Hugh Auchincloss in 1942, and the couple settled in Ridgewood.

While raising four children, Mrs. Auchincloss continued her own education. She graduated summa cum laude from the Columbia University School of General Studies in 1961 and received a Columbia master’s degree in 1967. Her concentration was in history.

In 1974, she became the second woman to serve on Columbia’s board of trustees; she previously was a trustee of Barnard, the women’s liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia.

Mrs. Auchincloss was proud of the Bundy name, her son said, but her married name caused her irritation. She married a man named Hugh Auchincloss; another Hugh Auchincloss was the second husband of Janet Lee Bouvier, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

"She was asked so many times about that," her son said. "She did not appreciate being confused with Jackie’s mother."

Mrs. Auchincloss’s husband, who specialized in breast cancer treatment and was on staff at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, died in 1998, several years after the couple retired to Westwood, Mass.

Mrs. Auchincloss is survived by her children, Katharine A. Corbin of Phoenix, Margaret A. Strachan of London, England; Dr. Hugh Auchincloss of Washington, D.C., and Dr. Elizabeth L. Auchincloss of New Rochelle, N.Y.; 11 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. Arrangements are by J.S. Waterman & Sons Funeral Home of Wellesley, Mass.