Walter R. Herrick

Walter Richmond Herrick was an American lawyer and politician from New York.

Education and career

He was the son of Assemblyman Jonathan R. Herrick and his second wife Charlotte Jackson Herrick. He graduated from Princeton University in 1898, and from Albany Law School in 1900.
He was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1911; and of the New York State Senate in 1913 and 1914.
In 1919, he was appointed by Gov. Al Smith as Narcotic Drug Control Commissioner, holding that office for three years.
He was appointed Manhattan Park Commissioner by Mayor James J. Walker, remaining in that position from 1927 to 1933.
Judge D-Cady Herrick was his half-brother.

Personal life and death

On July 5, 1916, Herrick married Mary Douglas Bosworth, and they had a daughter: Eileen J. Herrick. In 1939, Herrick made the news when he and his wife allegedly prevented Eileen, then an adult, from seeing George Lowther III, a suitor with whom she was enamored, leading Lowther to take the parents to court seeking a writ of habeas corpus. The young couple eloped early the following year, but divorced in 1946.
Herrick died in Albany at the age of 76.