Drexel was born in Manhattan on October 6, 1919. and, his first wife, Elizabeth Hough ( Thompson) Drexel (1896–1943), who married in 1918 and divorced in 1924. Shortly after his parents' divorce, his father married Jane
Barbour, a daughter of John Robert Taliaferro Barbour and a descendant of President
Zachary Taylor, in 1925. From his father's second marriage, he had two half-siblings, David Anthony Drexel (who married Joan Gripenberg, a daughter of
G. A. Gripenberg, the Finnish Minister to London, Sweden, and the
United Nations), and Jane Barbour Drexel (who married Harry Marshall Vale Jr., and John Porteous II). His maternal grandparents were James Beaton Thompson. His paternal grandparents were Alice Gordon ( Troth) Drexel and
John R. Drexel, the eldest surviving son of financier
Anthony Joseph Drexel (founder of
Drexel, Morgan & Co with
John Pierpont Morgan). His aunt, Alice Gordon Drexel, was a debutante who eloped Captain William Barrett, of the
Army Air Service, after which his grandparents relocated to Paris. His uncle, Gordon Preston Drexel, never married and spent "most of his time traveling." Drexel spent much of his childhood in
Neuilly, France, where his grandmother lived, and was educated at
St. Mark's School in
Southborough, Massachusetts before attending
Harvard University, graduated in 1942. ==Career==