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Lloyd C. Griscom

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Lloyd Carpenter Griscom (November 4, 1872 – February 8, 1959) was an American lawyer, diplomat, and newspaper publisher.[1][2]

Lloyd Carpenter Griscom
Griscom in 1900
United States Ambassador to Italy
In office
March 17, 1907 – June 14, 1909
PresidentTheodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Preceded byHenry White
Succeeded byJohn G. A. Leishman
United States Ambassador to Brazil
In office
June 6, 1906 – January 2, 1907
PresidentTheodore Roosevelt
Preceded byDavid Eugene Thompson
Succeeded byIrving Bedell Dudley
United States Minister to Japan
In office
June 22, 1903 – November 19, 1905
PresidentTheodore Roosevelt
Preceded byAlfred Buck
Succeeded byLuke E. Wright (as Ambassador to Japan)
United States Minister to Iran
In office
December 16, 1901 – December 24, 1902
PresidentTheodore Roosevelt
Preceded byHerbert W. Bowen
Succeeded byRichmond Pearson
Personal details
Born(1872-11-04)November 4, 1872
Riverton, New Jersey, United States
DiedFebruary 8, 1959(1959-02-08) (aged 86)
Thomasville, Georgia
Political partyRepublican
Spouses
Elizabeth Duer Bronson
​
​
(m. 1901; died 1914)​
Audrey M.E. Crosse
​
​
(m. 1929)​
RelationsFrances Griscom (sister)
Parent(s)Clement Griscom
Frances Canby Biddle
ResidenceLuna Plantation
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
New York Law School

Early life

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Lloyd Griscom was born on November 4, 1872, at Riverton, New Jersey. He was the son of shipping magnate Clement Griscom (1841–1912) and Frances Canby Biddle (1840–1923).[3] Among his siblings was Frances Griscom, an amateur golfer who won the 1900 U.S. Women's Amateur held at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York,[4] She and played in the 1898 Amateur at the Ardsley Club.[5]

He graduated in 1891 from the law department of University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Sigma Chapter of the Zeta Psi Fraternity. Griscom continued his legal studies at the New York Law School.[3] He later received a Doctor of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907.[1]

Career

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A photograph from 1909, at Centocelle Field outside of Rome, Italy, with King Victor Emmanuel III, Wilbur Wright, and Ambassador Griscom(*error/ this is actually Orville Wright), 1909.

In 1893–1894, Griscom served in the United Kingdom as secretary to Ambassador Thomas Bayard; he was admitted to the bar in 1896,[1] and the following year in 1897 he was deputy district attorney of New York. During the Spanish–American War, he served as captain and assistant quartermaster.[1]

While serving a short period as Secretary of Legation and chargé d' affaires at Constantinople, the 28-year-old Griscom made a notable achievement in 1900 by persuading the Sultan to purchase what would become the Ottoman cruiser Mecidiye from the American shipbuilder William Cramp & Sons.[6] Shortly afterward, he was appointed Minister to Persia in 1901.[7] He held the corresponding post in Japan (1902–1906) and was ambassador to Brazil (1906–1907) and to Italy (1907–1909).[7]

In 1911, he became a member of the law firm of Beekman, Menken, and Griscom, New York City, and was thereafter active in local Republican politics, helping found The New York Young Republican Club.[8] He contributed numerous articles to the Philadelphia Sunday Press on travel in Central America. In 1917, he was appointed a major in the department of the Adjutant-General of the United States Army and afterward became Assistant Adjutant-General.[9] During the war, he served as liaison officer to General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces of the U.S. Army.[9] He was a close friend of Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.[2]

Griscom's primary significance was as an advocate for globalized free trade as a means to promote peaceful development in accordance with his Quaker faith. In the Middle East he worked for better relations between Muslims and Christians, and he played a major role in the relief effort in Italy after the 1908 Messina earthquake took 50,000 lives. Prior to the death of Secretary of State John Hay in 1905, Griscom was offered the post of First Assistant Secretary of State. The appointment of Elihu Root to succeed Hay nullified Griscom's appointment to the State Department position.[1]

In 1940, he published a memoir of his professional life, Diplomatically Speaking,[10] covering his life from youth and his student days at the University of Pennsylvania to his homecoming as an Army officer after the end of World War One in 1919. In the first year it sold more than 90,000 copies in America before it was published in England. The Rt. Hon. Leo Amery, M.P., commented that "My old friend Lloyd Griscom gives a delightfully breezy picture as seen through American eyes of Edwardian England, of the diplomatic world, of many countries."[11]

Later life

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Following his retirement from public service, he bought and became the publisher of several Long Island newspapers, including the East Norwich Enterprise, the North Hempstead Record, and the Nassau Daily Star. Griscom purchased the Tallahassee [Florida] Democrat in 1929 owning it until his death in 1959. He was a cousin by marriage to Wolcott Gibbs, who later worked at several of Griscom's Long Island newspapers.[12][13]

Griscom studied painting under John Singer Sargent.[14]

Personal life

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On November 2, 1901, Griscom was married to Elizabeth Duer Bronson (1877–1914),[15] the daughter of lawyer Frederic Bronson.[16][17] Her mother, Sarah Gracie King,[18] was the granddaughter of U.S. Representative James Gore King and William Alexander Duer. Through Elizabeth's uncle, Frederick Gore King, she was the first cousin of Alice Gore King.[19] The Bronsons lived at 174 Madison Avenue[20] and had a country home, "Verna" in Southport, Connecticut[21] (which later became the Fairfield Country Day School).[22] Together, they were the parents of:[3][23]

  • Bronson Winthrop Griscom (1907–1977),[24] who married Sophie Gay,[25] the niece of painter Walter Gay, in 1931.[26]
  • Lloyd Preston Griscom (b. 1913).[27]

After her death in 1914, he remarried to Audrey Margaret Elizabeth Crosse (1900–1975) in England on October 3, 1929.[14] Audrey was the daughter of Marlborough Crosse and the niece of C. E. Barnwell Ewins of Marston Trussell Hall in Leicestershire.[28] His best man at the wedding was Brig. Gen. Sir Charles Delmé-Radcliffe (who married the daughter of Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet), who was British military attaché at Rome while Griscom was envoy there.[14]

Griscom died of a stroke on February 8, 1959, at Archbold Memorial Hospital in Thomasville, Georgia while visiting his sister Frances who was a patient there.[29][30] After his death, his widow, who inherited the bulk of his estate including the Leon county Luna Plantation as well as the Tallahassee Democrat, which she ran from 1958 through 1965.[31]

References

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  • Salvatore Prisco, "Progressive Era Diplomat: Lloyd C. Griscom and Trade Expansion," DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT, 18 (September 2007), 539–549.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "LLOYD C. GRISCOM, PUBLISHER, 86, DIES; Lawyer and Former Envoy Led Tallahassee Paper -- Army Officer in 2 Wars". The New York Times. 9 February 1959. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  2. ^ a b "LLOYD C. GRISCOM UNDER THE KNIFE | Condition Very Grave Last Night in Philadelphia After an Operation | FOR STOMACH TROUBLE | Surgeons Unwilling to Discuss the Outcome and Reticent About His Prospects". The New York Times. April 2, 1912. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Jordan, John Woolf (1911). Colonial Families of Philadelphia. Lewis Publishing Company. p. 1073. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  4. ^ "Golf Timeline at About.com". Archived from the original on 2016-09-14. Retrieved 2018-05-21.
  5. ^ "History of Women's Golf In America". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2018-05-21.
  6. ^ Griscom, Lloyd (1940). Diplomatically Speaking. Boston: Little Brown. pp. 166–175.
  7. ^ a b "Lloyd Carpenter Griscom - People - Department History". history.state.gov. Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs United States Department of State. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  8. ^ "History".
  9. ^ a b "Lloyd Carpenter Griscom papers". loc.gov. The Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  10. ^ Lloyd C. Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking Boston: Little Brown, 1940; London: John Murray, 1941
  11. ^ Birmingham Daily Post Tuesday, 2 December 1941, p. 2.
  12. ^ Vinciguerra, Thomas (2015). Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 230. ISBN 9780393248746. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  13. ^ Vinciguerra, Thomas; Gibbs, Wolcott (2011). Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from the New Yorker. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 8. ISBN 9781608197309. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  14. ^ a b c "COL. L. C. GRISCOM WEDS MISS CROSSE; His Best Man at Ceremony in English Village Is Brig. Gen. Sir Charles Delme-Radcliffe". The New York Times. 4 October 1929. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  15. ^ "MRS. L. C. GRISCOM DEAD.; Wife of ex-Ambassador to Rome Succumbs in Hotel St. Regis". The New York Times. 17 November 1914. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  16. ^ "GRISCOM-BRONSON NUPTIALS.; United States Minister to Persia Takes a Wife in London". The New York Times. 3 November 1901. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  17. ^ Browning, Charles H. (1911). Americans of Royal Descent: Collection of Genealogies Showing the Lineal Descent from Kings of Some American Families ... Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 353. ISBN 9780806300542. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  18. ^ "MRS. ADRIAN ISELIN DIES IN HER SLEEP; Wife of Banking House's Head Is Stricken in Her 81st Year. A SOCIETY CONSERVATIVE Was a Descendant of the King, Duer and Gracie Families, Long Prominent in This City". The New York Times. 5 April 1931. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  19. ^ Sullivan, Robert G. (1911). "Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs: Van Rensselaer Vol. IV". www.schenectadyhistory.org. Schenectady County Public Library. pp. 1814–1821. Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  20. ^ Social Register, New York. Social Register Association. 1904. p. 55. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  21. ^ "Bronson Windmill". ghvis.com. Greenfield Hill Improvement Society. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  22. ^ "History". www.fairfieldcountryday.org. Fairfield Country Day School. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  23. ^ Carpenter, Louis Henry (1912). Samuel Carpenter and His Descendants: Comp. private circulation. p. 156. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  24. ^ "Deaths. GRISCOM—Bronson". The New York Times. 21 July 1977. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  25. ^ "BRONSON W. GRISCOM". The New York Times. 18 July 1977. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  26. ^ "S R O Sign Out for Gay-Griscom Bridal". New York Daily News. 21 Jun 1931. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  27. ^ "Nina Renshaw Married To Lloyd P. Griscom Jr". The New York Times. January 27, 1979. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  28. ^ "LLOYD C. GRISCOM TO WED IN ENGLAND; New York Lawyer Will Marry Miss Audrey M.E. Crosse of Southsea on Oct. 3. A LEICESTERSHIRE BRIDAL Ceremony to Take Place at Marston Trussell Hall, Home of the Bride-Elect's Uncle". The New York Times. 18 September 1929. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  29. ^ "L. C. GRISCOM, EX-DIPLOMAT, DIES AT 86". Chicago Tribune. February 9, 1959. p. 54. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  30. ^ Newspaper Owner, Former Envoy, Dies
  31. ^ "Mrs. Griscom Given Control of Democrat". Tallahassee Democrat. February 13, 1959. p. 9. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
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Diplomatic posts
Preceded by United States Minister to Persia
December 16, 1901–December 24, 1902 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Minister to Japan
June 22, 1903-November 19, 1905 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Ambassador to Brazil
6 June 1906–2 January 1907 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Ambassador to Italy
March 17, 1907-June 14, 1909 		Succeeded by
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