[2] Through his father, who served as a U.S. Representative from New York, he was a great-great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant[3] and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Wait Winthrop and Joseph Dudley.
[5] His sister Margaret Livingston Chanler served as a nurse with the American Red Cross during the Spanish–American War.
[6] His older brother Winthrop Astor Chanler served in the Rough Riders in Cuba[7] and was wounded at the Battle of Tayacoba.
[8] Chanler's eldest brother, John Armstrong Chaloner, married novelist Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy.
John Winthrop Chanler's will provided $20,000 a year for each child for life (equivalent to $470,563 in 2018 dollars), enough to live comfortably by the standards of the time.
[14][15] He ran on the combined ticket of the Democratic Party and the Independence League, defeating the incumbent M. Linn Bruce, although his running mate William Randolph Hearst was defeated in his quest for the governorship by Republican Charles Evans Hughes,[16] who later became Chief Justice of the United States.
[21] On September 24, 1890, Chanler married Alice Chamberlain (1868–1955),[22] at St George's, Hanover Square, in London.
[24] Before their divorce in 1920, they had three children together: On May 23, 1921, the 52 year old Chanler married Julia Lynch Olin (1882–1961),[29] also a recent divorcee with two daughters of her own, in Paris.