John George Alexander Leishman

John George Alexander Leishman (March 28, 1857 – March 27, 1924) was an American businessman and diplomat. He worked in various executive positions at Carnegie Steel Company and later served as an ambassador for the United States.[1]

John George Alexander Leishman
Leishman in 1901
United States Ambassador to Switzerland
In office
June 9, 1897  August 9, 1897
Appointed byWilliam McKinley
Preceded byJohn L. Peak
Succeeded byArthur S. Hardy
United States Ambassador to Turkey
In office
1901–1909
Appointed byWilliam McKinley
Preceded byOscar S. Straus
Succeeded byOscar S. Straus
United States Ambassador to Germany
In office
October 24, 1911  October 4, 1913
Appointed byWoodrow Wilson
Preceded byDavid Jayne Hill
Succeeded byJames W. Gerard
United States Ambassador to Italy
In office
July 4, 1909  October 7, 1911
PresidentWilliam Howard Taft
Preceded byLloyd C. Griscom
Succeeded byThomas J. O'Brien
Personal details
Born(1857-03-28)March 28, 1857
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DiedMarch 27, 1924(1924-03-27) (aged 66)
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Spouse(s)
Julia Crawford
(m. 1880; died 1918)
ChildrenMartha Leishman
Nancy Louise Leishman
John G. A. Leishman Jr.
ParentsJohn B. Leishman
Amelia Henderson Leishman

Early life

John George Alexander Leishman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 28, 1857. He was the only son of Scots-Irish immigrants John B. Leishman (1827–1857) and Amelia Henderson (1832–1905).[2][3]

His father drowned in the Allegheny River the same year in which he was born. Leishman began a lifetime of work at age ten, as an assistant for a Pittsburgh physician. Over the next seventeen years, Leishman would rise to become a trusted confidant of both Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie.[2]

Career

Prior to his entry into the Carnegie service, John Leishman had been in the service of Shoenberger Steel Company, as what was termed a "mud clerk". Mud clerks were the steel industry's representatives on the river wharf, responsible for tracking the shipping of goods: the arrival of raw materials and the departure of finished products. To guarantee efficiency and success, mud clerks lived 24 hours a day in small sheds on the riverbank. This work led first to an unsuccessful venture as an independent steel broker and then a successful partnership with his friend and colleague from Shoenberger Steel, William Penn Snyder.[2][3]

As senior partner in Leishman and Snyder, Leishman caught the attention of Andrew Carnegie, who convinced Leishman to enter Carnegie's service on October 1, 1884, as Special Sales Agent. Carnegie saw more than a little of himself in the younger man; throughout his life, Carnegie continued to think of Leishman as one of his "boys" and included Leishman in the official "History of the Carnegie Veterans Association". Leishman occupied the following positions: Vice Chairman, Carnegie Brothers & Company, Ltd.; Vice President and Treasurer, Carnegie Steel Company and President, Carnegie Steel Company.[2][4]

The Leishmans' social and business connections provided entrée into an extraordinarily exclusive circle of sixty-odd families, called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. It was conceived as an idyllic summer colony, bought and developed by Henry Clay Frick in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, a short, convenient train ride away from the smoke and soot of Pittsburgh's industry. To create the summer colony, an abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad earthen dam was rebuilt and increased in size to create a mountaintop reservoir for pleasure boating, which was named Lake Conemaugh. Among the Club's members were Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon. The Club's earthen dam failed on May 31, 1889, contributing to the Johnstown Flood disaster.

Many of the Pittsburgh members of the Club were hastily assembled in an ad hoc meeting and formed "The Pittsburgh Relief Committee." Two decisions were made at that meeting. One was to make immediate, generous and tangible gifts to help the flood relief efforts. The other was a pledge never to speak of the Club or the Flood in public or in private. All litigation was handled by attorneys Philander Knox and his partner James Hay Reed, of the firm Knox and Reed (now Reed Smith LLP), both of whom were themselves South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club members.[5][6]

On July 23, 1892, Alexander Berkman, a self-proclaimed anarchist, sought to destroy Henry Clay Frick, the man Berkman blamed for the carnage of the Homestead steel strike in the preceding weeks. Armed with a pistol and a sharpened rat-tailed file, Berkman gained easy access to the headquarters of Carnegie Steel and found his way into the second floor private office of the chairman, 43-year-old Henry Clay Frick. Berkman forced his way into Frick's private office on the heels of a porter who had taken in his card. He opened fire, and Frick fell to the ground with three bullets in his body. Berkman was fended off by Leishman, Frick's second in command, who was in Frick's office at the time.[7]

Amid the growing rancor between Frick and Carnegie, Leishman attempted to steer a middle course. This was thwarted when Frick engaged a stratagem to orchestrate the ouster of the man who had saved his life from the presidency of Carnegie Steel, and his removal from the Western Pennsylvanian business scene. Frick alerted Carnegie to Leishman's speculation in the stock market, a practice that Carnegie engaged in freely, but abhorred in his subordinates. Frick worked behind the scenes, with Philander Knox to see that Leishman would be offered the post as ambassador to Switzerland.

Diplomatic career

Ambassador Leishman with the queen of Italy at an exhibition in Rome.

Under pressure from both men, Leishman withdrew from Carnegie service in June 1897, to accept the appointment by President William McKinley as United States Ambassador to Switzerland. Thereafter, Leishman became United States Ambassador to Turkey in 1900, United States Ambassador to Italy in 1909 and United States Ambassador to Germany in 1911.[8]

Years later, as a board member of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, Frick used a similar scheme to arrange the removal of James Hazen Hyde (the founder's only son and heir) from the United States to France by seeking an appointment for him to become United States Ambassador to France. Unlike Leishman a decade before, Hyde rebuffed the offer. However, he did go to live in France, where he met and eventually married Leishman's eldest daughter, Marthe.

While serving in Turkey, Leishman was instrumental in effecting the safe release of missionary Miss Ellen Stone[9] as well as bringing about the purchase of the first overseas property to serve as a United States embassy, the Palazzo Corpi.[10] He also distinguished himself for diplomatic tact and dexterity in his negotiations with Turkey for full rights for American citizens and schools in that country, and in his pressing with equal success his insistence that the American minister should have access to the Sultan. His office was elevated to the rank of Extraordinary Ambassador and Plenipotentiary in 1906.[8] While serving in Italy, Leishman purchased the much beloved and often reproduced painting called the Madonna of the Streets. The painting's current whereabouts is not known.

Personal life

On September 9, 1880, at Homewood Chapel, Leishman married Julia Crawford (1864–1918), the daughter of Edward Crawford and Nancy Harriet (née Ferguson) Crawford of Pittsburgh. They were the parents of three children:

Leishman's daughters made European marriages that were much talked of at the time. The American press considered these notably brilliant matches even among the many monied American young ladies (those "lovely trans-Atlantic invaders" as Edith Wharton called them) who found suitable titled European husbands in the pre-World War I marriage market. However, some titled Europeans felt that the Leishman girls had wed above their social station.

While serving abroad, the Leishmans were often in Paris, at Deauville, Monte Carlo, or in the Swiss or Italian lakes, always a part of a glittering circle of celebrated American and European friends. Julia Leishman was instrumental in forming and serving as the first president of the Paris Skating Club; among her intimate friends who shared in this Paris innovation was the Baroness Henri de Rothschild.[21]

Later life

As a result of the impasse between himself and Kaiser Wilhelm II which was created by his daughter Nancy's marriage to Karl von Croy, Leishman left Berlin and retired to private life in 1914. His wife Julia died in 1918 in Monte Carlo. He died on March 27, 1924 in Monte Carlo. They are buried in the Cimetière de Monaco.[1][2][3]

References

  1. "J. G. Leishman Dies. A Former Diplomat. Found Dead of Heart Attack in Bed in Hotel on Monte Carlo". New York Times. March 28, 1924. p. 17. Mr. Leishman was President of the Carnegie Steel Company when he took the post of Minister to Switzerland in the McKinley Administration. ...
  2. Dickson, William B. (1938). History of Carnegie Veterans Association. Montclair: Mountain Press.
  3. Who Was Who in America. 1897–1942. p. 720.
  4. The Romance of Steel: The Story of a Thousand Millionaires," by Herbert N Cassar, page 149
  5. "The Johnstown Flood", David McCullough, 1995
  6. "Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait," Martha Frick Symington Sanger, Abbeville Press 1998
  7. "My Life" by Emma Goldman
  8. Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Leishman, John G. A." . Encyclopedia Americana.
  9. Carpenter, Teresa, "The Miss Stone Affair", Simon and Schuster, 2003
  10. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 13, 2007. Retrieved December 26, 2007.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. "MRS. MARTHE L. HYDE; Daughter of Late Diplomat Had Been Wife of James Hazen Hyde" (PDF). The New York Times. July 28, 1944. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
  12. The Bystander, March 14, 1906, page 523.
  13. "Chanel: A Woman of Her Own", by Axel Madsen, 1991
  14. Cole Porter, by Charles Schwartz, page 56.
  15. Entrancing Muse, by Carl B. Schmidt, 2001, page 191
  16. The Associated Press, Sketch #2459, issued July 1, 1936: "James Hazen Hyde."
  17. Saxon, Wolfgang (April 8, 1997). "Henry Hyde is Dead at 82: Wartime Spymaster for O.S.S." New York Times.
  18. "Miss Leishman Weds Duke of Croy," New York Times, October 25, 1913, page 1.
  19. "WED TO LORD ALASTAIR.; Mrs. Helene D. Leishman's Second Marriage in Paris a Surprise" (PDF). The New York Times. May 1, 1918. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
  20. Beard, Patricia (2009). After the Ball : Gilded Age Secrets, boardroom betrayals, and the party that ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905. Xlibris Corp. ISBN 978-1436357852.
  21. Doings of Americans in France, The New York Times, Sunday, March 13, 1904, page 4.
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by
John L. Peak
United States Ambassador to Switzerland
June 9, 1897 – August 9, 1897
Succeeded by
Arthur S. Hardy
Preceded by
Oscar S. Straus
United States Ambassador to Turkey
1899 – 1909
Succeeded by
Oscar S. Straus
Preceded by
Lloyd C. Griscom
United States Ambassador to Italy
July 4, 1909 – October 7, 1911
Succeeded by
Thomas J. O'Brien
Preceded by
David Jayne Hill
United States Ambassador to Germany
October 24, 1911 – October 4, 1913
Succeeded by
James W. Gerard
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