John Griswold Webb (August 13, 1890 – May 5, 1934) was an American politician from New York.
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Early life
Webb was born on August 13, 1890, at Riverdale in the Bronx. He was the son of railroad executive H. Walter Webb (1856–1900) and Amelia (née Griswold) Webb (1856-1910). In 1904, Leila Webb, now a widow, married Ogden Codman, Jr., the noted society architect and interior decorator best known for his novel written with Edith Wharton.
His paternal grandfather was U.S. Minister to Brazil James Watson Webb and his maternal grandfather was U.S. Congressman John Augustus Griswold. Among his uncles was Civil War general Alexander S. Webb and railroad executive Dr. William Seward Webb, who married Eliza Vanderbilt, the daughter of William K. Vanderbilt.
Webb was a graduate of the Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts, and Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1913. In 1912, he went with a fellow Harvard student by car from New York City to Vancouver, a then unprecedented adventure.
Career
In 1912, Webb was a war correspondent for the Boston Herald in Mexico. From 1914 to 1915, he studied at the Cornell University College of Agriculture. Beginning in 1915, he was the owner and General Manager of "Webb Farms" in Clinton Corners, New York.