Brand Whitlock

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Brand Whitlock

Brand Whitlock (1869 – 1934) was an American municipal reformer, diplomat, journalist and author. He was born at Urbana, Ohio and was educated in the public schools and by private tutors. He also studied law under Senator J. M. Palmer and was admitted to the bar in 1894.

In Chicago as of the early 1890s, he was a reporter for the venerable Chicago Herald. As baseball was one of his beats, he got to cover the likes of longtime Chicago captain-manager Cap Anson, whom he sometimes referred to in print as "Grampa." The recollection appears in Whitlock's 1914 book Forty Years of It and contemporaneous Herald coverage from the early 1890s can be found in which the term appears, in relation to Anson. Newspapers hardly had bylines as of the 1890s, and direct confirmation of Whitlock's baseball writing career may be elusive.

Settling in Toledo in 1897, he established a successful practice. Between 1905 and 1911 he was four times elected mayor of Toledo on an independent ticket, but he denied a fifth nomination. In 1913 Whitlock was appointed minister to Belgium by President Wilson.

When the European war broke out his burdens were increased by the assumption of representation for seven additional countries and his position was made delicate by the German occupation of Belgium. His adroit performance of his duties in the office won for him an international reputation for tact, zeal, and efficiency.

[edit] Works

The Thirteenth District (1902)
Her Infinite Variety (1904)
The Happy Average (1904)
The Turn of the Balance (1907)
Abraham Lincoln (1908)
The Gold Brick (1910)
On the Enforcement of Law in Cities (1910 and 1913)
Forty Years of It (1914), an autobiography.
Belgium: a Personal Record (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1919) (ISBN 0-7426-1342-9 May, 2000)