Charlemagne Tower, Jr.

Charlemagne Tower, Jr.

Charlemagne Tower, Jr. (April 17, 1848 – February 24, 1923[1]) was an American businessman, scholar, and diplomat.[2]

Biography

Charlemagne Tower was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 1848 to Charlemagne Tower Sr. and Amelia Malvina (Bartle) Tower. He was the first of seven children.

He spent his childhood in Orwigsburg and Pottsville, Pennsylvania. In 1862 he entered a military academy in New Haven, Connecticut and transferred in 1865 to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.[3] Tower entered Harvard University in 1868 and graduated in 1872.

After graduating from Harvard, Tower returned to Europe where he lived and traveled for four years. Tower studied history, languages and literature. Initially he lived in the cities of Madrid, Paris and Tours. In 1874 he traveled to Germany and later to Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Greece.[3]

In July 1876 Tower returned to the United States and was admitted to the bar in 1878, later doing business in the mining and railroad sectors. He moved to Duluth, Minnesota in 1882 when he began serving as president of the Duluth and Iron Range Railroad. In 1887 he returned to Philadelphia.[3]

In 1891 he began to devote himself exclusively to history and archaeology, and became a professor in the University of Pennsylvania. He served as Minister to Austria-Hungary (1897–1899) for President William McKinley before being transferred to Russia as Ambassador (1899–1902). Following his post in St. Petersburg, he served as Ambassador to Germany from 1902 to 1908 under President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, donating a large collection of 2,300 Russian books to the library, which forms the nucleus of Penn's Russian and East European collection.[4]

Death

In 1923 Tower and his wife were living in the Green Hill Farms Hotel in Overbrook, outside of Philadelphia. On February 9, 1923 he entered the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. Charlemagne Tower, Jr. died February 24, 1923. The cause of death was pneumonia.[5] He was buried in Waterville Cemetery in Waterville, NY.[6]

Works

Further reading

  • Brunet, Helen Tower. Nellie and Charlie: A Family Memoir of the Gilded Age. New York: iUniverse, 2005. ISBN 9780595343843
  • Historical Society of Pennsylvania. "Proceedings at the dinner given by the Historical society of Pennsylvania to Hon. Charlemagne Tower, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Austria-Hungary. April twenty-ninth, 1897." Philadelphia: E. Stern & Co. 1897.
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by
Bartlett Tripp		 Minister to Austria-Hungary
April 1, 1897–February 9, 1899 		Succeeded by
Addison C. Harris
Preceded by
Ethan A. Hitchcock		 United States Ambassador to Russia
March 19, 1899–November 19, 1902 		Succeeded by
Robert S. McCormick
Preceded by
Andrew D. White		 United States Ambassador to Germany
December 19, 1902–June 8, 1908 		Succeeded by
David Jayne Hill

References

This article integrates text in the public domain taken from the following two sources:

  1. ↑ "Charlemagne Tower's Funeral". The New York Times. 1923-02-27. p. 19.
  2. ↑ "TOWER, Charlemagne". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1760.
  3. 1 2 3 The National Cyclopedia of American Biography Vol. 5, 1894, Pg. 190-191.
  4. ↑ "U.S. Ministers and Ambassadors to Russia". United States Embassy
  5. ↑ "Ex-Ambassador Tower Dies at 74." New York Times, February 25, 1923, page 16.
  6. ↑ http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7639721
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charlemagne Tower, Jr..
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, January 02, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.