Michael Henry Herbert

Sir Michael Henry Herbert KCMG CB PC
The Hon. Sir Michael Henry Herbert by 'Spy', 1903
British Ambassador to the United States
In office 1902–1903
Monarch	Edward VII
Preceded by	Lord Pauncefote
Succeeded by	Sir Mortimer Durand
Personal details
Born	25 June 1857
Died	30 Sept. 1903 Davos, Switzerland
Spouse(s)	Leila Belle Wilson
Occupation	diplomat

Sir Michael Henry Herbert, KCMG CB PC (25 June 1857 – 30 September 1903), was a British diplomat and ambassador.

Career

Herbert was brought up at the family house at Wilton House, in Wiltshire. He joined the Diplomatic Service and was posted to Paris aged 21, on 1 June 1879, where he was appointed Third Secretary in March 1880 and Second Secretary in November 1883.

He was transferred to Washington DC on 31 August 1888 and was awarded the CB in 1896. He ended his career as the second British Ambassador to the USA in succession to Lord Pauncefote, who had died in office. He created with the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay a joint commission to establish the border between the U.S. district of Alaska and British interests in the Dominion of Canada, where gold had been found in the 1890s, which resulted in the definitive Alaskan boundary treaty of 1903. He was awarded the KCMG in 1902 for services during the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903.

He died of tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland, aged 47. The town of Herbert in Saskatchewan, Canada, is named after him.

Family

Sir Michael Herbert was the fourth and youngest son of distinguished parents: Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea, the British statesman, and Elizabeth Herbert, Baroness Herbert of Lea, philanthropist and Roman Catholic writer and apologist. His father, Sidney, was himself the younger son of George Augustus Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke, by the Russian noblewoman Countess Catherine Vorontsov, daughter of Semyon Vorontsov. In due course, two of Herbert's brothers succeeded to the earldom of Pembroke, his half-uncle Robert Herbert, 12th Earl of Pembroke having died without legitimate issue in Paris on 25 April 1862. Herbert was granted the style and precedence of the younger son of an earl by Royal Warrant on 30 May.

Herbert married on 27 November 1888 Leila 'Belle' Wilson (d. 19 Nov. 1923), a daughter of Richard Thornton Wilson, a banker and cotton broker of New York and Newport, Rhode Island, all of whose children married advantageously. Wilson's eldest daughter, Mary (also called May) married New York landowner Ogden Goelet (they were the parents of Mary Goelet) and his youngest daughter, Grace, married Cornelius Vanderbilt III; his son Orme was married to the daughter of Mrs. William Astor, "the" Mrs. Astor.

Herbert and his wife had two sons:

1. Sir Sidney Herbert, 1st Baronet, MP; b. 29 Jul 1890; d. unm. 1939, when the baronetcy expired.
2. Lt Michael George Herbert, b. 1893; d. unm. 1932.

References

• Sir Tresham Lever, The Herberts of Wilton (Murray, 1967)
• Burke's Peerage, 107th edition
• Cornelius Vanderbilt, IV, Queen of the Golden Age (McGraw-Hill, 1953)