William Palfrey was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1741. He was an active participant in the American Revolution, serving as chief clerk to John Hancock, as aide-de-camp to George Washington and, later, as a paymaster-general of the Continental Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

In 1780, the new United Stated Congress unanimously appointed Palfrey as U.S. consul general to France. He began his sea voyage on December 20 of that year on the ship Shillala but was never heard from again.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Palfrey; American Consular Bulletin, December 1920, Page 9; Foreign Service Journal, October 1975, Page 13]

Samuel Shaw was born in 1754 in Boston, Massachusetts to Francis and Sarah (Burt) Shaw. He served as an army officer in the American Revolution, commanded at Fort Washington in Boston in 1776, and from 1779 to 1783 served as aide-de-camp to General Henry Knox. He served later in a staff role at the Battles of Trenton, Battle of Monmouth, and at the Battle of Yorktown.

In 1784, he sailed to China to inaugurate trade on behalf of the fledgling United States, serving as U.S. Consul at Canton from 1786 to 1789. He returned to the United States in 1792, when he was reappointed to China by George Washington. He was enroute to the United States from China when he died “of a disease of the liver incident to the climate” at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa on May 30, 1794, at the age of 39.

His journals were published in 1847 and his letters and papers are located at the Massachusetts Historical Society. There is a monument to Samuel Shaw at Copp’s Hill Burial Ground in Boston.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Shaw_(consul) and The journals of Major Samuel Shaw: the first American consul at Canton: with a life of the author, Page 123]

Joel Barlow was born in Redding, Connecticut in 1754. A graduate of Yale College, he served as a chaplain for the 4th Massachusetts Brigade in the American Revolution, was later admitted to the Connecticut bar and became a minor poet best known for his satirical publication The Hasty-Pudding.

Barlow served as the American consul in Algiers between 1795 and 1799. During this time, he engaged in a bargain to free more than 100 American merchants capture by Barbary pirates and negotiated treaties with the Barbary States to prevent future attempts to kidnap American citizens.

Appointed minister plenipotentiary to France in 1811, Barlow planned to meet with Napoleon Bonaparte in modern-day Lithuania to discuss a commercial agreement. He never encountered the famous emperor and, having accompanied the French army on its retreat from Russia, died of exposure in the village of Zarnowiec.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Barlow; Foreign Service Journal, October 1996, Pages 46-49]

U.S. Navy officer Oliver Hazard Perry, member of a family with a long naval history, was born in 1785 in Rhode Island. He served in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean during the Barbary Wars, and during the War of 1812 at the Battle of Lake Erie, where he led U.S. forces to a victory and received a Congressional Gold Medal. He later participated in the defenses of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore during the British invasion of the Chesapeake Bay, and in 1815 returned to the Mediterranean for the Second Barbary War.

Following a controversy involving a duel in New Jersey, he was offered a diplomatic mission to South America, sailing for the Orinoco River in Venezuela in 1819 to negotiate a treaty with Simon Bolivar at Angostura. He successfully negotiated and signed a treaty with Vice President Francisco Antonio Zea in August 1819, but along with many of the crew, was ill with yellow fever by the time the ship sailed downriver. The crew tried to reach Trinidad for assistance, but Perry died at sea.

He was originally interred in Port-of-Spain, and his remains repatriated to Rhode Island in 1826. He has been featured on U.S. postage stamps and his former home still stands in Rhode Island.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Hazard_Perry]

Robert Sterry was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1781. Following in his father’s footsteps, he studied law at Brown University, lived for a while in the Louisiana Territory, and also had seven years of Army experience during which he fought in the War of 1812.

He was appointed to be U.S. consul to La Rochelle, France in 1815. On January 17, 1820, Sterry was aboard the merchant ship Helen bound to New York from France when it ran into a gale and was wrecked off of Southampton, New York.

Sterry was buried in the North End Cemetery in Southampton. He left behind a widow, Louisa Arden Sterry, and a daughter, Elizabeth.

[Sources: https://www.southamptonhistory.org/post/the-story-of-sterry-stone; Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, New York, February 9, 1820, Page 3, online at https://www.newspapers.com/article/poughkeepsie-journal-obit-robert-sterry/154126182/; Ancestry.com records; Department of State Office of the Historian records; https://afsa.org/americas-overlooked-diplomats-and-consuls-who-died-line-duty]

Nathaniel Gibbs Ingraham Jr. was the son of a wealthy New York merchant and was born in New York in 1792. The elder Mr. Ingraham, who did business with George Washington and was a guest at least once at Mt. Vernon, also helped other commercial contacts to become merchant-consuls at other advantageous locations, including Cuba.

The younger Mr. Ingraham, after living for a time in England, was appointed as U.S. consul in Tampico, Mexico. He died of a fever in Tampico, Mexico on April 30, 1824, at about 32 years of age.

[Sources: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:320566/PDF/; https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-06-02-0148]

Harris Ellery Fudger of Massachusetts, born June 3, 1798, in Gloucester, Massachusetts was designated U.S. Consul at Santa Marta, Colombia on July 11, 1823. He was murdered in 1825 on July 13, 1825, in Bogotá while staying at an inn. He was 27 years old.

A dispatch from the legation in Bogotá dated July 17, 1826, said he was "stabbed in the heart with his own sword, his throat cut and his trunks pillaged of their contents." Two officers of the British Legion -- in Colombia since 1817 to aid in Bolivar’s fight for independence from Spain -- were staying at the same inn and were acquainted with Mr. Fudger. In fact, Consul Fudger earlier accused them of stealing several items. The two men were detained for two years on suspicion of involvement before being court martialed and convicted, with Captain Grant sentenced to ten years for murder and Sargeant Rey Luis found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to two years. The attending physician at the scene of the crime noted that most of the violence to the body was likely done after Mr. Fudger was already deceased, and that the sword, a pistol, and other personal effects, while strewn about the room, were not taken from the scene.

[Sources: https://1997-2001.state.gov/www/publications/statemag/statemag_may98/feature3.html; https://www.elinformador.com.co/index.php/distrito/298961-santa-marta-celebra-el-bicentenario-de-consul-ee-uu-harris-fudger; https://www.banrepcultural.org/biblioteca-virtual/credencial-historia/numero-169/noche-sangrienta-en-san-victorino; Department of State Office of the Historian records]

Robert Kelly Lowry of Maryland was born in about 1772 in London, England and was resident in Baltimore, Maryland by 1810. In October of the same year, he was sent to Venezuela as a marine commercial agent, where he corresponded with the Department of State on the rapidly changing political climate from La Guayra. He became U.S. Consul at La Guayra by 1812.

Married to Henrietta Wager in Philadelphia in 1815; they went on to have four children. His younger son, Commodore Reigert Bolivar Lowry, was born in La Guayra, and later became a decorated Naval officer.

Lowry ran for a Congressional seat in Pennsylvania in 1820, but later returned to Venezuela, having been reappointed as consul. He died at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela of a tropical fever (likely yellow fever) on January 24, 1826.

[Sources: Ancestry.com records; Lancaster Intelligencer (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), February 28 1826, Page 3, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/559899443; https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Francisco_de_Miranda/ROBMIR/21*.html]

Richard Clough Anderson Jr. was born August 4, 1788, in Kentucky. He graduated from William and Mary in 1804, and later practiced law in Louisville. He served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1817 to 1821, and was the nephew of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition and grandfather of U.S. Minister to Belgium and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Larz Anderson. His stepmother, Sarah Marshall, was a cousin of Chief Justice John Marshall.

Richard Anderson was appointed U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to the Gran Colombia on January 27, 1823. He departed Colombia enroute to take on a new assignment as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Panama Congress of Nations, but died enroute in or near Cartagena of yellow fever on July 24, 1826.

He was buried in Cartagena, although there is a marker for him in the family cemetery in Kentucky. Anderson County, Kentucky is named in his honor.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Anderson_Jr.; https://history.ky.gov/markers/soldiers-retreat-2]

James A. Holden of Massachusetts was a Commercial Agent at the seaport of Aux Cayes (Les Cayes), Haiti. He departed post on August 5, 1827, enroute to the U.S. on the schooner Diligent which was lost at sea.

Note: His name is inscribed on the original 1933 AFSA Memorial Plaque but was inadvertently reinscribed on a new plaque during the 2021 plaque expansion project.

[Source: American Foreign Service Journal, January 1929, Page 22.]

William Tudor was a businessman, journalist, and author born in Boston in 1779. He was U.S. Chargé d'Affaires in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 1827 to his death there on March 9, 1830, from a “fever.”

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tudor_(1779-1830)]

James Shannon of Kentucky served in the War of 1812, became an attorney and practiced law in Lexington, Kentucky after the war.

In 1832, he was appointed by President Andrew Jackson as Chargé d'Affaires to the Republic of Central America. Soon after his arrival in Guatemala with his wife, Susah Shelby Shannon (daughter of the first governor of Kentucky) and their niece, Susan Hart Shelby, both Shannon and his niece died of yellow fever.

The papers of James Shannon and those of Susan Shelby Shannon are held in the Special Collections of the University of Kentucky Library.

[Source: James Shannon papers, 1804-1833 (uky.edu)]

John Savage Miercken was born in Philadelphia on March 3, 1803, the son of Peter and Maria Miercken of Southwark, today a neighborhood in south Philadelphia. Appointed U.S. Consul in Martinique in 1829, he boarded the schooner Lafayette in September 1832 bound for Philadelphia via Turks Island, where the ship picked up cargo before setting sail again. The ship never reached Philadelphia and was presumed lost. He was 29 years old.

Note: His name is inscribed on the original 1933 AFSA Memorial Plaque but was inadvertently reinscribed on a new plaque during the 2021 plaque expansion project.

[Sources: The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 1833, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/346285336; Ancestry.com records]

William Shaler was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1773. He spent his younger years as a commercial agent for a mercantile firm based in New York and later worked as a sea captain for numerous trade vessels. Shaler published his travel narrative, “Journal of a Voyage between China and the Northwestern Coast of America,” in American Register in 1808.

Shaler served in Natchitoches, Louisiana, as an official agent to monitor and report the exploits of José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois, who was briefly a leader in Texas’ revolt against Spain. While at this post, he encouraged and participated in the filibustering Gutiérrez-Magee expedition. Shaler later contributed to peace conferences in Europe and Algiers, serving as U.S. consul general in the latter location for 12 years and helping to end the Second Barbary War. His accounts were published in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society and Sketches of Algiers.

In 1825, the American Philosophical Society elected Shaler a member, and in 1828 the diplomat received an honorary master’s degree from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). One year later, Shaler was appointed the U.S. consul general to Havana, Cuba. He died at post in a cholera epidemic on March 29, 1833.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shaler; American Foreign Service Journal, November 1936, Pages 601-605, 628-633]

James James of Pennsylvania became U.S. Consul in Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1832. While enroute to Mexico City, he died at Puebla, Mexico on or about April 20, 1834, likely of yellow fever.

[Sources: The Sunbury Gazette (Sunbury, Pennsylvania), July 12, 1834, Page 3, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/511595190; Hancock County Advertiser, June 4, 1834, Page 3, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/1013065457]

Edmund Roberts was born June 29, 1784, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He went to sea as a merchant sailor in 1800, and lived in London until he was 24. After his return to New Hampshire in 1808, he married Catherine Whipple Langdon, niece of the governor. The couple had 11 children.

In 1823, Roberts, by then a merchant, secured the post of U.S. consul to Demerara in modern-day Guyana. In his private capacity as a merchant, he sailed for Zanzibar in 1827 after trading in the Indian ocean and contacted the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, who asked Roberts to escort ships to the United States to petition for trade to counterbalance British influence in the region. Roberts suggested to the U.S. government that negotiating commercial treaties might help reduce barriers to American shipping across the globe, which led to his diplomatic career.

In January 1832, Roberts was appointed Special Agent for the negotiation of commerce of the U.S. in the Pacific, which took him to Cochinchina, Thailand ("Siam") and Muscat and Oman during the years 1832–36. In 1836, Roberts returned to East Asia to ratify the two treaties and reach an agreement with Cochinchina. However, he died of dysentery in Portuguese Macau on June 12 before he could accomplish his mission.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Roberts_(diplomat)]

James Bonaparte Thornton was born in Merrimack, New Hampshire and studied law at Yale. His maternal grandfather, Matthew Thornton, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected a Representative in the New Hampshire State Legislature in 1827 and Speaker of the House in 1829, moving to Washington, DC in 1830 after being appointed to a position at the Department of Treasury.

Appointed U.S. Charge d’Affaires to Peru on June 15, 1836, he departed his post for a trip to Valparaiso on December 10, 1837. He arrived in Callao (the port city close to Lima) on the U.S. ship Falmouth from Valparaiso on January 22, 1838, and died on dysentery just three days later on January 25.

He was buried in the British Cemetery at Bellavista, Callao, and his remains were repatriated to New Hampshire in 1871. He left behind his wife Sophia and two children, James and Mary. After his death, guardianship of his two children passed to family friend Franklin Pierce, later President of the United States.

[Sources: Niles National Register, May 19, 1838, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/572069008; Ancestry.com, State Department Office of the Historian web records; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/36030544/james_bonaparte_thornton]

Daniel Brent was born in 1768 in Stafford County, Virginia. He moved to Philadelphia at an early age and then to Washington, D.C. to take up a position at the Department of State, working for 20 years as a chief clerk (Under Secretary of State). He was appointed U.S. Consul General in Paris in 1834 by President Jackson. He died at Paris of typhoid exhaustion after gout on January 31, 1841, after eight years of consular service. He was 68 years old. He was predeceased by his wife, Eliza Walsh, and their two children, Anne and Robert.

[Sources: The Age and Lancaster and Chester County Weekly Gazette, February 27, 1841, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/558782457; https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/75924183/person/172246438201/facts?_phsrc=tIU880&_phstart=successSource]

Felix H. Suau was born in France and emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina at the age of 12 in 1827. Serving as U.S. Consul at Point Petre, Guadeloupe, he lost his life in the March 8, 1843, earthquake in Guadeloupe.

Note: In the 2021 re-inscription of names on the AFSA Memorial Plaques, the final “u” in his last name was inadvertently omitted. AFSA plans to correct the omission the next time that a new name needs to be inscribed.

[Sources: The Charleston Daily Courier, March 22, 1843, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/604513583; Ancestry.com records]

Thomas Westbrook Waldron was born in 1814 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Daniel and Olive Waldron. Along with his brother, Richard, Waldron joined the United States Exploring Expedition, also known as the Wilkes Expedition, from 1838 to 1842, exploring a portion of Antarctica’s coastline, the Pacific Islands, and the coast of what is now Washington State. Waldron Glacier in Antarctica is named after him and Waldron Island in Puget Sound is named after either him or his brother.

He became the first U.S. Consul to Hong Kong and Macau, with his appointment confirmed in May 1844. He died at Macau in September of the same year of cholera. He was 30 years old.

While he was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery at Macau, there is also a cenotaph to his memory in his family’s plot in Portsmouth. The letter from John C. Calhoun to Thomas Waldron in May 1844 confirming that his nomination as Consul to Hong Kong has been approved by the Senate is located at the New Hampshire Historical Society.

[Sources: https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/29642283:60525; Colonial Times, July 10, 1844, Page 4, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/1061538354; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Westbrook_Waldron_(consul)]

William Sumter Murphy was born in South Carolina in 1796. He studied law in Virginia and had his own practice in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1818. He was heavily interested in politics and served in the Ohio state militia, where he attained the rank of brigadier general.

His first diplomatic appointment was as Special and Confidential Agent of the United States to Central America in 1841. Ill with malaria, he presented his credentials at Guatemala City and finally returned to the United States in 1842 when it was clear that the Federal Republic of Central America, which had dissolved just as he arrived, would not reconstitute itself.

On April 10, 1843, he was appointed as the Charge d’Affaires to the Republic of Texas at Galveston, arriving on June 16 of the same year. Just a week later, the Tyler administration made the annexation of Texas a priority, and Murphy took part in correspondence and secret preparations for the Texas-Tyler treaty. The treaty and associated correspondence were leaked to the public in April 1844, and the Senate rejected the treaty in June. Meanwhile, Murphy’s appointment was considered and rejected by the Senate, leading to his recall from Galveston. However, before he could be recalled, he fell ill and died on July 13, 1844, of yellow fever at the height of a local pandemic.

He was originally buried in Galveston, but his remains were later relocated to Chillicothe, Ohio. He left behind a wife, Lucinda, and a son, Robert, and was predeceased by three other children. He was the third U.S. Minister to die in Texas since 1840.

[Sources: The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 16, 1844, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/25539379; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sumter_Murphy; https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/105178698:60525; Ancestry.com records]

Archibald Magill Green was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, on November 7, 1805. He first married Margaret Finley Farish in 1826 in Virginia; after her death, he then married Eleanor Frances Farish Tate in Baltimore on March 24, 1836. They had at least four children and resided at Liberty Hall Plantation in Brandy Station, Virginia.

Appointed as Consul to the Republic of Texas, he died at Galveston on July 28, 1844, of yellow fever at the height of a pandemic. He is buried in the Old City Cemetery in Galveston.

[Sources: The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 16, 1844, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/25539379; https://www.shapell.org/manuscript/john-tyler-vice-president/; The Brooklyn Weekly Eagle (Brooklyn, New York), 29 Aug 1844, Page 4, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/541744211; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/81144973/archibald-magill-green]

Tilghman Ashurst Howard was born November 14, 1797, in Pickensville, South Carolina. He moved to Tennessee in 1816, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, practicing in Knoxville from 1818. He moved to Rockville, Indiana in 1830 and served as U.S. attorney for Indiana from 1833-1837. In 1839, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until his resignation in 1840.

He was appointed charge d’affaires to the Republic of Texas, where he served until his death from yellow fever in Washington-on-the-Brazos on August 16, 1844, after only two weeks at his post.

He and his wife, Martha Maxwell, had at least nine children. He is buried in Rockville, Indiana; Howard County, Indiana and Howard County, Iowa are named after him.

[Sources: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72554506/tilghman-ashurst-howard; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilghman_Howard]

U.S. Consul Richard H. Belt died during a typhus epidemic at Matamoros on November 11, 1844.

[Source: The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), December 4, 1844, Page 2, online at https://www.newspapers.com/image/25551184]

Ferdinand Gardiner was born in about 1797. A merchant from New York, he was appointed U.S. Consul in the port of Praia from May 13,1837, until his death of a tropical fever on May 6, 1847. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery.

[Sources: “From the Cape de Verd Islands,” New York Daily Herald, June 16, 1847, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Alexander Sparks of South Carolina was a medical doctor educated at Columbian College in Washington, DC (now the George Washington University) and entered Yale University in 1834. He completed his studies at the Medical College of South Carolina at Charleston and later in Paris. He was appointed by President Polk as U.S. Consul to Venice where he served from April 1846 to August 19, 1849, when he died of cholera at his post. Dr. Sparks’ remains were repatriated to the United States for burial at Society Hill, South Carolina. He left behind his wife, Alicia, and a daughter, Marie Alice. His papers can be found in the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. Note: His 1933 inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque includes middle initial “S” but documentation later found from the 1850s says “A.”

[Source: Dr. William Alexander Sparks, Welsh Neck Baptist Church Cemetery, Society Hill, South Carolina. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 45553142; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Thomas T. Turner III was born March 5, 1820, in New York, the son of Thomas and Mary Turner. He served as U.S. Consul in Bahia, Brazil, from August 1849 until his death during an epidemic less than four months later on December 2, 1849. Serving on a recess appointment, his position was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate until January 24, 1850, several weeks after his death. His remains were interred in Brazil and there is a cenotaph in his memory at Menands, New York.

[Sources: Thomas Turner III, Albany Rural Cemetery, Menands, New York. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 160135505; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Thomas Jefferson Morgan was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, on April 3, 1815, where his father, also Thomas Morgan, was a noted attorney. The younger Mr. Morgan married Martha Hamilton in 1839, became an attorney and was active in Ohio politics before he was appointed Secretary of Legation at the U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro in June 1847. Well-liked in the expatriate community in Rio de Janeiro, he was actively engaged in assisting U.S. citizens and dealing with matters pertaining to shipping. Morgan died on March 30, 1850, at the age of 34 during a yellow fever outbreak in Rio de Janeiro, leaving behind his wife and four children under the age of ten. He was buried at the British Cemetery Gamboa in Rio, but his remains were repatriated to the United States in October of the same year along with those of the young son of U.S. Consul David Tod, who also died in the same yellow fever epidemic. Morgan was buried in Washington Cemetery in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Note: His 1933 inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque includes middle initial “I” but documentation later found from the 1850s says “J.”

[Sources: Thomas Morgan, British Cemetery Gamboa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 125031168; Thomas Jefferson Morgan, Washington Cemetery, Washington, Pennsylvania. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 167201671. “Eloquent Tribute,” The Pittsburgh Post, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 3, 1850, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “Very Late and Important From Brazil,” Semi-Weekly Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15, 1850, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; “Our Brazil Correspondence,” New York Daily Herald, New York, New York, November 30, 1850, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Hardy Murfree Burton was born June 7, 1818, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He attended the University of North Carolina and was a well-known attorney in Murfreesboro. He married Mary Hoggett in May 1849, but she died later the same year at age 21. Burton was the grandson of Col. Hardy Murfree, who served in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War, and Burton grew up in his house, Uxor Hill, which his mother inherited from her father. He served as U.S. Consul in St. Thomas from January 27, 1852, until his death of yellow fever on December 15, 1852, at the age of 34. Burton’s remains were repatriated via New Orleans and taken upriver to Nashville on a steamboat. He was buried in the Old City Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in February 1853.

[Sources: Hardy M. Burton, Old City Cemetery, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 24947567; “Died,” The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 5, 1853, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Hector Ames of New York City was born in 1825 to Barrett and Mary Craig Ames, a wealthy New York-based cotton merchant and the daughter of U.S. Congressman Hector Craig. Ames graduated from Columbia College (now Columbia University) and prior to his appointment to Acapulco, served as attaché at the U.S. Legation in Madrid. While in private practice as an attorney, he traveled to the Hawaiian Islands in 1851. He served as U.S. Consul in Acapulco, Mexico, from December 7, 1852, until his death from “fever of the country” on May 18, 1853, at the age of 28.

[Sources: Daily Alta California, Volume 4, Number 153, 3 June 1853; “Barrett Ames,” American Aristocracy website, https://americanaristocracy.com/people/barrett-ames; “Died,” New York Daily Herald, New York, NY, July 6, 1853, Page 8; online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John W. Howden was born in Bristol, Vermont, on June 23, 1813. He had a farm in Ohio and served as the county Clerk of Court. He married Elizabeth Adams in 1844 in Mentor, Ohio. Howden was well-connected to influential members of the Democratic party in Ohio and took the position of U.S. Consul in Bermuda in part to spend time in a climate more suitable for his health -- he was ill with tuberculosis when he departed for his post in April 1852. He died of yellow fever in Saint George, Bermuda, on September 11, 1853, at the age of 40, leaving behind his wife and daughters Fannie and Mary. There is a cenotaph in Howden’s memory at Evergreen Cemetery in Painesville, Ohio, and his remains were interred at St. Peter’s Churchyard in Saint George, Bermuda.

[Sources: John W. Howden, Evergreen Cemetery, Painesville, Ohio. Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 66504986; “Death of John W. Howden,” Weekly Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, October 6, 1853, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

George R. Dwyer of Salem, Massachusetts, was born in 1832 to John Dwyer, a merchant, and his wife, Mary Dodge Dwyer. He had several siblings, including a brother, John F. Dwyer, who was a sea captain. He was appointed as U.S. Consul to Mozambique on June 4, 1853. He died on June 24, 1854, of “coast fever” (probably malaria) in Maputo, Mozambique at the age of 25.

[Sources: Dwyer, George R. (d. 1854). The Political Graveyard website. https://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/dwyer.html#422.06.20; “Death of a U.S. Consul,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, September 27, 1854, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; The New Orleans Crescent, New Orleans, Louisiana, October 4, 1854, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; “Death of a United States Consul,” The Autauga Citizen, Prattville, Alabama, October 12, 1854, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Samuel Phinney Collings was born in 1816 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He was the editor of The Republican Farmer newspaper in Wilkes-Barre from 1835 to 1852. He attended West Point as a cadet but resigned due to ill health. He arrived in Tangier, Morocco, on January 3, 1855, as U.S. Consul accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Beaumont Collings, two of their five children, and his sister-in-law. He died on June 15, 1855, of a “congestive fever” or “African fever” (19th century terms usually referring to malaria) just six months after arrival at the age of 39.

[Sources: The Sunbury Gazette and Northumberland County Republican, Sunbury, Pennsylvania, July 21, 1855, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; https://archive.org/details/historicalrecordv6john/page/n121/mode/2up, Page 56; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William D. McCracken was born in Pennsylvania in 1819. He practiced law in Farmington, Missouri, for 12 years and served as Clerk of the Missouri Senate for five years prior to his consular appointment. He was the U.S. Consul in La Union, El Salvador. Ill from a local fever acquired in La Union, he embarked on the steamer Panama in an attempt to improve his health but died on the voyage on July 7, 1857, of a “congestive fever” (19th century term usually referring to malaria) at the age of 39. He was buried on an island (possibly Isla San Lucas) in the Bay of Nicoya, opposite Punta Arenas, Costa Rica. His widow returned to her hometown in Illinois shortly after his death. They had been married a short time and did not have children.

[Source: William D McCracken, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 139993106; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Edward Venable was born August 4, 1804, in Virginia and was a partner in the law firm Venable and Garner in Winchester, Tennessee. He married Jane Curle in 1841 and they had seven children, six of whom survived into adulthood. He served as a state legislator in Tennessee from 1847 to 1849 and was a delegate to the Nashville convention in 1850 at which nine states debated secession. On March 24, 1857, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of Legation in Brazil, but he declined that appointment. He was appointed as Minister Resident (chief of mission) to Guatemala where he died of cholera on August 22, 1857, at age 53, just 21 days after his arrival and before he could present his credentials. He died in the home of the incumbent Minister, Henry Savage, and was buried in the local Protestant burial ground (now Cementerio General).

[Sources: William Edward Venable, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 193704004; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Edward Lawrence Ely was born in Pennsylvania in 1824. He was a Quaker and a medical doctor, and studied medicine under his uncle, Dr. Ralph Lee. In 1850, worried about his health, Ely abandoned his medical practice and set off to travel the world, visiting California during the Gold Rush, the South Pacific, and ended up in Bombay. His story was published in 1954 in The Wanderings of Edward Ely: A Mid-19th Century Seafarer’s Diary. He served as a consul in Bombay (now Mumbai) India from May 8, 1852, until his death on January 17, 1858, of dysentery at the age of 34, just two days after the baptism of his newborn son, Edward.

[Source: Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

James W. Torbert of Boonville, Missouri, married Eliza Muir in Missouri on May 18, 1854. He was appointed Commercial Agent in St. Thomas on February 24, 1858, and confirmed as U.S. Consul there on April 24 of the same year. He and arrived in St. Thomas on May 10, 1858, and died on December 26, 1858, of yellow fever after an illness of five days. He was buried in St. Thomas. Note: His inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque says “Torburt” but documentation later found from the 1850s says “Torbert.”

[Sources: “Died,” New York Tribune, New York, New York, January 22, 1859, Page 7, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Beverly Leonidas Clarke was born in Winterfield, Virginia in 1809. A graduate of Lexington Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1833 and served as a Democrat in the Kentucky and U.S. Houses of Representatives. He was a delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1849 and later ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of his home state.

President James Buchanan appointed Clarke as minister to Guatemala and Honduras in 1858. Clarke died in the former nation two years later.

Isaac Smith McMicken was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army in the Mexican-American War, and again in Mexico in 1851-1852, rising to the rank of Colonel. He served as Postmaster of the U.S. Army in Vera Cruz and was also an attorney. He served as U.S. Consul at Acapulco from May 28, 1858, to April 23, 1860, when he died of yellow fever at his post. McMicken was buried in the American Cemetery at Playa Larga in Acapulco.

[Sources: “Latest News Telegrams, The Daily Exchange, Baltimore, Maryland, June 18. 1860, Page 1, online at Ancestry.com; Col Isaac Smith McMicken, American Cemetery Playa Larga, Acapulco de Juarez Mexico, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 249155449; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Col. Walter William Stapp of Louisville, Kentucky, was editor of the Kentucky Yeoman. He was appointed as U.S. Consul in Pernambuco (Recife), Brazil, by President Buchanan and confirmed on June 14, 1858. He served as consul there, heavily involved in shipping matters and the repatriation of American seamen shipwrecked in the South Atlantic, until his death of yellow fever on April 8, 1860. He was buried in the British Cemetery in Recife. He was 34 years old.

[Sources: “Humanity of a British Captain,” Liverpool Mercury, Liverpool, England, January 19, 1860, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; “News of the Day,” The New York Times, New York, New York, May 11, 1860, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; Col Walter W. Staff, British Cemetery, Recife, Brazil, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 248717730; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John Ellery Amory was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 20, 1831, the son of Thomas Coffin Amory, Jr. and Ester Sargent. He attended Boston Public Latin School and became a lawyer, before procuring a passport and leaving the United States in March 1856. He was appointed Vice Consul in Calcutta in May 1857. He died of cholera in Calcutta on June 28, 1860.

[Sources: Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, Massachusetts, May 18, 1857, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Henry Heusken was a Dutch-American interpreter for the first U.S. consulate in Japan. Born Henrick Conrad Johannes Heusken in Amsterdam in 1832, he spent much of his childhood at a boarding school in Brabant before emigrating to the United States in 1853 after the death of his father. He changed his name to Henry in New York City, where local contacts put him in touch with Townsend Harris, who had just been appointed the first U.S. Consul General to Japan and sought an interpreter who spoke Dutch, the only European language familiar in Japan at that time.

Harris and Heusken sailed from New York in October 1855, stopping in the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand) to negotiate a commercial treaty, and arrived in Japan in August 1856. They lived in extreme isolation in Japan. However, their work led to the conclusion of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858. Heusken also worked for the newly arrived Lord Elgin, British Minister to Japan, who sought a similar treaty between the United Kingdom and Japan during that period.

In January 1859, the U.S. Consulate became a Legation and was relocated to Edo (Tokyo). Heusken frequently rode around the city on horseback, which was a privilege traditionally reserved for the samurai caste, and offensive to anti-Western locals, which led to at least one stoning incident. In his personal diary, Consul Harris noted that Heusken was cavalier about is personal safety, often going out unarmed and at night. On the night of January 15, 1861, while returning home from a dinner with a Prussian diplomat, Heusken and the security detail accompanying him were attacked, possibly by anti-foreign samurai. Although Heusken was severely wounded, he mounted a horse and galloped 200 yards to the American Legation, where he was treated by surgeons from the British and Prussian Legations. He died shortly after midnight on January 16 at the age of 28. He was buried at the cemetery in Korin-ji in Tokyo on January 18. Following his funeral, most foreign diplomats in Edo relocated to Yokohama for safety. While the Japanese government made a $10,000 payment to Heusken’s mother, no one was ever convicted for his murder, and the unsolved case remained a hindrance to U.S.-Japanese relations for some time thereafter.

[Sources: “Interesting from Japan: Further Particulars of the Murder of the American Secretary of Legation,” The New York Times, April 11, 1861, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; “Henry Heusken,” Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Heusken; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Isaiah Thomas III was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1805. He married Mary Ann Reeder in May 1831 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they had six children. His wife died in 1851. He was appointed consul to Algiers by President Lincoln. He was confirmed as consul on January 22, 1862, and departed New York on the SS Milwaukee with his three of his four children on February 21; however, the ship was lost at sea. He was survived by his eldest son, Edward Thomas.

[Sources: Isaiah Thomas III, Buried or Lost at Sea, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 134049994; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Richard Williams was born on March 23, 1838, in Lockport, Ohio, to Welsh immigrant parents. Trained as a lawyer, he spent two years writing a manual for attorneys, which he was revising at the time of his death. Williams had married a daughter of wealthy Para (now Belem), Brazil, attorney William Potter on July 15, 1862. After being offered eleven different potential posts, he chose Brazil and was confirmed as U.S. Consul in Para, Brazil, on January 22, 1862. He took ill suddenly on September 19 and remained lucid enough to put his affairs in order before he died of yellow fever on September 25, 1862, at the age of 24. In addition to his wife, he left behind his parents, William and Catherine, and four siblings in Ironton, Ohio.

[Sources: Welsh language article “Y Diweddar William Richard Williams,” Herald, Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales, May 2, 1863, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William L. Baker of Maryland was confirmed as U.S. Consul in Mazatlán for Guaymas, Mexico, on August 5, 1861. On December 20, 1862, while traveling with a delegation of American businessmen to visit silver mines in Guaymas, one member of the party found the travel too dangerous and refused to proceed, while the rest of the group, including Baker, continued on the road. A few days later, the remains of the traveling party, including Baker, were discovered. They had been shot with arrows.

[Sources: “Murder of the U.S. Consul at Guaymas,” The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California, January 24, 1863, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Edward Waterman Gardner was born in 1804 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, became a merchant, and was appointed U.S. Consul to Apia, Samoa, on January 15, 1862. On January 1, 1863, he departed with his wife, Phebe Hussey Gardner, from Fiji enroute to Apia aboard the schooner Anita. The vessel was swamped in a hurricane in the South Pacific and Gardner and his wife went down with the vessel. On February 3, a chair belonging to Gardner washed ashore on the island of Vavau (Tonga) among other items, many marked with the name of the captain of the Anita. In addition to Consul Garner and his wife, other passengers on the ship included the sister and two children of the British Consul in Fiji. Gardner left behind two adult sons from his first marriage in Massachusetts. He was 58 years old at the time of his death.

[Sources: “Wreck,” The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia. May 21, 1863, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; Trood, Thomas, Island Reminisces, McCarron, Stewart & Co., Sydney, Australia, 1912, http://public-library.uk/dailyebook/Island%20reminiscences%20(1912).pdf; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

George True was born in 1833 in Maine and was confirmed as the U.S. Consul in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, on July 26, 1861. He served in that capacity until he died at his post on February 22, 1864, of smallpox at the age of 30. True married Susan Laughrey in 1857 in Knox County, Ohio, and they had two children, Katherine and George. True had been vaccinated twice for smallpox prior to his illness, and that no other known cases of smallpox had occurred for some time in Funchal at the time of his death. He is buried in Mound View Cemetery in Knox County, Ohio.

[Sources: George True, Mound View Cemetery, Mount Vernon, Ohio, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 83632376; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Sydney Thayer, a Harvard graduate, was a correspondent of the New York Evening Post, and later became the editor in chief. Having always been in ill health, he traveled to other climates seeking to improve it, which is how he ended up participating in an ill-fated expedition to Nicaragua in 1855 with American politician Henry Kinney. Having survived the expedition, but still in poor health, Thayer accepted Secretary of State Seward’s offer to appoint him as U.S. Consul General in Alexandria, Egypt, in March 1861.

He died in Alexandria of malaria on April 10, 1864. He was 37 at the time of his death and buried in the Old British Protestant Cemetery in Alexandria, Egypt. In 2022, after a two-year search by renowned Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zawi Hawass and his team, and at the urging of Cairo’s Deputy Consul General Mark Marrano, Consul General Thayer’s grave, that of Consul General Daniel Smith McCauley (died in 1852), and the spouse of another U.S. Consul General, Eleanor Gliddon (died in 1837), were rediscovered in the overgrown and vandalized cemetery.

[Sources: Springfield Weekly Republican, Springfield, Massachusetts, May 7, 1864, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; William Sydney Thayer, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 1615050506; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Charles Gilbert Hannah was born in Salem, New Jersey, in 1833 and attended Burlington College. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Demerara, British Guinea (modern-day Guyana) on February 23, 1864, but died of yellow fever on December 8, 1864, at his post at the age of 31.

[Sources: Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Alexander Robertson McKee was born in 1815 in Kentucky was confirmed as U.S. Consul in Panama City, Colombia (modern-day Panama) on July 26, 1861. He died there of chronic dysentery on September 3, 1865, and left behind his wife, Martinett Hardin McKee and six children. McKee was buried in Panama. Correspondence between McKee and Abraham Lincoln can be found in the Abraham Lincoln papers. His remains may have been repatriated, as there is a grave marker for him in the family plot at Frankfort Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky.

[Sources: Alexander Robertson McKee, Frankfort Cemetery, Frankfort, Kentucky, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 58433853; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Irvin was born in 1805 in Linden Hall, Pennsylvania. He married Martha Curtin and had two sons. Irvin was a medical doctor, and his oldest brother, James Irvin, was a Member of Congress. Irvin was confirmed at U.S. Consul to Amoy (Xiamen), China, on April 7, 1864. He arrived at post on October 25, 1864, and died of cholera on September 9, 1865, while treating local residents as a volunteer physician during a cholera epidemic.

[Sources: “Death of the American Consul at Amoy, China,” Baltimore Daily Commercial, Baltimore, Maryland, November 29, 1865, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Jose Casagemas served as U.S. Vice Consul in Barcelona, Spain, from April 30, 1865, until his death on October 9, 1865, of cholera during an epidemic. He was succeeded at his post by his brother, Manuel Casagemas, who served as Vice Consul in Barcelona until 1893.

[Sources: “The Cholera at Barcelona,” Baltimore Daily Commercial, Baltimore, Maryland, November 6, 1865, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Abraham Hanson, a Methodist clergyman and teacher, was born in Otley, England in 1819, graduated from Bromley College, and emigrated to the United States with his wife, Lydia Handley Hanson and his parents, to serve as a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal Church. A staunch abolitionist, he preached throughout the Midwest before becoming a local political and city treasurer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Hanson became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1842.

Hanson was appointed Commercial Agent to Monrovia, Liberia, in May 1862, and later became the Commissioner and Consul General on June 18, 1863 -- the first American diplomat permanently posted in sub-Saharan Africa, where he was determined to support the growing population of freed slaves taking up resident in the new country. He was confirmed in the role on January 12, 1864. He died at his home in Monrovia on July 20, 1866, likely of malaria, of which he had had recurring bouts for some time. He was 47 years old. Hanson left his wife his house in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the life insurance policy he took out prior to assignment to Monrovia.

[Sources: “Death of Abraham Hanson, The Daily Milwaukee News, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 25, 1866, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; “Death of Hon. A Hanson,” The Telegraph-Courier, Kenosha, Wisconsin, September 27, 1866, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Hiram R. Hawkins was born in 1827 in Lansingburgh, New York. He emigrated to California in 1849, and after sailing around Cape Horn, arrived in San Francisco on July 11, 1849, at the height of the Gold Rush. He settled in Placer County and worked as a miner. Hawkins ran for public office several times after California joined the Union, serving as Deputy County Clerk and Justice of the Peace. He also worked as a newspaper editor from 1861. In California, he married Eliza B. Ecklea, and they had three children. His wife and two of their children died in 1855, while his oldest child, John, was sent to the home of his grandfather, Ezekiel Hawkins in Lansingburgh, New York, and raised there. In 1863, Hawkins moved to Gold Hill, Nevada, and became editor of the Gold Hill News.

While in Nevada, Hawkins was appointed Consul to Tumbes, Peru, on March 17, 1865, and confirmed on March 26, 1866. He died at post on November 28, 1866, at the age of 39 during a local epidemic.

[Sources: Hiram R. Hawkins, Lansingburgh Village Cemetery, Lansingburgh, New York, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 115956030; “Death of Hiram R. Hawkins, Gold Hill Daily News, Gold Hill, Nevada, January 16, 1867, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Born in Massachusetts on April 22, 1822, William Baldwin Little was a medical doctor who established and operated William B. Little and Company, Druggists and Manufacturing Chemists in Boston in 1848; he also traveled to San Francisco, California, where he established the Little & Company Drug Store. Married to Sarah E. Butts in 1846, they resided in both Boston and San Francisco. During the Civil War, he was commissioned as a surgeon in Staten Island, New York, and served with the American Medical Association in New York City during the war. Little was confirmed as Consul to Panama City, Colombia (now Panama) on February 16, 1866. He died on January 29, 1867, of yellow fever and was buried in the Cementerio de Extranjeros (Foreigners’ Cemetery) in Panama City. He left no children.

[Sources: Dr. William Baldwin Little, Cementerio de Extranjeros, Panama City, Panama, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 99699422; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Louis Victor Prevost was born in Baltimore in about 1824. He was married to Charlotte LeBrun in 1849 and they had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood. He was appointed as U.S. Consul in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on May 8, 1863, with confirmation on March 18, 1864. Already resident in Guayaquil, Prevost had organized a company there in 1861. He died on May 23, 1867, at his post of yellow fever at the age of 43.

[Sources: “From the Isthmus--The March of Revolution,” The Portland Daily Press, Portland, Maine, June 12, 1867, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Allen Atkinson Hall was born in North Carolina in 1804 and moved to Nashville, Tennessee in his youth. He studied law and passed the bar, but rather than become an attorney, he turned to political writing, and in 1825 was made editor of two Nashville newspapers. Hall left journalism in 1841 to become the Charge d’ Affaires to Venezuela, returning to Nashville and journalism in 1845, and then to Washington to the Department of the Treasury in 1849 as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He also became editor of The Republic in Washington, D.C. in 1850 but returned to Nashville in 1857 to operate the Nashville Daily News.

In 1859, Hall, as editor of the Nashville News became involved in editorial warfare with the Nashville Union and its editor, George G. Poindexter, who accused Hall of being an abolitionist. On November 18, 1859, Poindexter approached Hall carrying an umbrella that concealed a pistol and walked toward Hall’s news office. Hall stepped outside with a shotgun and shouted for Poindexter to stop. When he did not comply, Hall shot him, killing him instantly. Hall was never tried for the killing, and this incident was inspiration for Mark Twain’s short story “Journalism in Tennessee.”

Hall became U.S. minister to Bolivia in 1863 and died during a local epidemic in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on May 28, 1867, at the age of 62. He was predeceased by two spouses and a son and survived by his daughters, Lucy, Isabelle, and Sophia.

[Sources: “Death of the United States Minister to Bolivia,” Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, Massachusetts, July 18, 1867, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Henry Everard Peck was born in Rochester, New York in 1821. A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Oberlin Theological Seminary, he became a Professor of Sacred Rhetoric and an Adjunct Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Oberlin College. Peck was also an avid abolitionist who traveled throughout Ohio giving speeches and campaigning for anti-slavery candidates.

In September 1858, Peck and a group of fellow abolitionists helped John Price, an escaped slave arrested by Oberlin authorities under the Fugitive Slave Act, flee to freedom in Canada. Peck spent 85 days in jail for his participation in what is now known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue.

After helping to recruit Union soldiers for the Civil War, Peck served as the first U.S. Minister Resident (Chief of Mission equivalent) and Consul General to Haiti. He died there of yellow fever on June 9, 1867.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_E._Peck]

Edward Conner was born in 1824 in New York, but lived for years in San Francisco, California, where he was active in journalism and business. He held consular positions in Talcuahana, Chile, and Mazatlán, Mexico. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Guaymas, Mexico, on March 13, 1863; he was also extensively involved in a mercantile business. He died in Bacochirampo, Mexico (near Guaymas) on July 16, 1867, of dysentery at age 42. He was buried in San Francisco, California, on September 10, 1867.

[Sources: “In Memoriam,” the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, October 14, 1867, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Daily Alta California, Volume 19, Number 6366, 20 August 1867 and Volume 19, Number 6418, 11 October 1867; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

James Wilson was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana in 1825. He graduated from Wabash College and, later, earned a law degree from Indiana University. After serving in the Mexican-American war, he was admitted to the Indiana bar and elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives. Wilson later reached the rank of brevet lieutenant colonel while fighting for the Union in the Civil War.

In 1866, President Andrew Johnson named James Wilson the U.S. minister resident to Venezuela. He served for one year before succumbing to yellow fever on August 8, 1867.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson_(Indiana_politician)]

Edward Maynard was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on February 3, 1843, the son of Horace Maynard, an abolitionist and southern Congressman, and later Tennessee’s attorney general, who served as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire and U.S. Postmaster General following his son’s death. Edward Maynard attended Amherst College, and married Eliza Jane Harper in Ohio in September 1866.

Maynard was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Turks Island in the West Indies on May 14, 1866. He died at his post on Grand Turk Island on January 10, 1868, of yellow fever at age 24, shortly before the birth of his only child on Grand Turk Island just a few weeks later who was named Edward for his deceased father. Maynard’s remains were repatriated, and he is buried in Knoxville, Tennessee.

[Sources: Edward Maynard, Old Gray Cemetery, Knoxville, Tennessee, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 43322264; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Horton Smyley was born in 1792 in Providence, Rhode Island. It is believed that he first sailed to the south Atlantic on a whaling or sealing ship in the 1820s, and he spent much of the next 22 years of his life at sea. He first married Evelina Chafee in 1839; she died in Newport, Rhode Island in 1847. His second wife, Catherine Clapp, accompanied him when he settled in the Falkland Islands, where he was a merchant sea captain. They had two daughters, Evelina and Catherine, and a son, William.

Smyley was appointed to be a commercial agent at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on September 12, 1850, and then as U.S. Consul to Rio Negro, Argentina on September 28, 1850; however, it appears he never took up permanent residence in Rio Negro because of the Argentine government’s opposition at the time to foreign diplomats posted outside the capital. Smyley returned to Port Stanley, and in 1857 and again in 1859, he and his crew saved shipwrecked sailors near the Falkland Islands. Smyley sent his wife and children to the United States early during the Civil War and departed for Montevideo in 1854 in search of a better climate for his own health. He returned to the Falkland Islands to aid an American ship carrying arms to San Francisco and returned to the United States in June 1864.

He returned to the Falkland Islands in 1866 and discussed returning to Rio Negro, but there is no evidence that he ever went. He died on February 14, 1868, in Montevideo, Uruguay, during a cholera epidemic while visiting the U.S. consul there. He is buried in the British Cemetery in Montevideo. Smyley Island in Antarctica is named after him.

Note: His inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque says “Smiley” but documentation later found from the 1860s says “Smyley” except his tombstone which reads “Smyly.”

[Sources: Capt. William Horton Smyley, British Cemetery, Montevideo, Uruguay, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 60555248; “Adventures of a Belgian Sailor,” Buffalo Weekly Express, Buffalo, New York, January 18, 1859, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Dictionary of Falklands Biography website: https://www.falklandsbiographies.org/biographies/smyley_william; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

James Henry McColley was born in Pennsylvania. He was confirmed at U.S. Consul at Callao, Peru, on February 14, 1865. McColley and his family had temporarily moved from Callao to Lima following earthquakes in the region. His daughter was married to his vice consul and the family had lost his grandchild just a year earlier. McColley died at his residence in Lima of yellow fever on April 17, 1869. He was initially buried in Peru, while his remains were later repatriated to the United States.

[Sources: “Peru,” New York Herald, New York, NY, May 10, 1869, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Stedman was born November 24, 1816, in Granville, Ohio. He was a farmer in Randolph, Ohio, and was involved in local politics. He married Elizabeth Elmore and they had five children. He was elected as a Republican to the Ohio State Legislature in 1859. During the Civil War, Stedman enlisted in the Ohio cavalry in 1861 and served through March 1865, mustering out with the rank of Brigadier General. He and his three sons fought in that same regiment. After the war, he continued for a time to serve in the Ohio State Legislature and Senate.

He was confirmed as U.S. Consul in Santiago de Cuba on April 7, 1869, but died of yellow fever soon after arrival on July 6, 1869, at the age of 53. He was buried at his post, but there is a cenotaph in his honor in the family plot at Disciple Cemetery in Randolph, Ohio.

[Sources: Ancestry.com records; https://www.ohiocivilwarcentral.com/william-stedman/; Office of the Historian records.]

Charles Erasmus Perry was born in New York City in 1834. A resident of Albany, New York, he served as superintendent of the U.S. Telegraph service in Albany in 1865. Perry was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Aspinwall, Colombia (now Colon, Panama) on April 16, 1869. He served at his post from June 1, 1869, until his death of a “sudden fever” on October 17, 1872, at the age of 38. He was survived by his wife, Harriet Day Shepard Perry, and three of their four sons, Charles Jr., John, and William. His remains were repatriated in 1875 and interred in Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York.

[Sources: “News Items,” The Times Record, Brunswick, Maine, October 26, 1872, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “Spanish Insolence,” Washington Chronicle, Washington, D.C., May 30, 1872, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Hon. Charles E. Perry, United States Consul at Aspinwall,” The New York Times, New York, NY, October 26 1872, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Affairs at Aspinwall: The Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, July 6, 1872, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Charles E. Perry Sr., Albany Rural Cemetery, Menands, New York, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 177532957; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Charles Edwin Ballard was born November 3, 1851, in Salem, Massachusetts to James and Emeline Ballard. He first traveled to Zanzibar at the age of 16 to conduct business on behalf of a friend. Having contracted malaria during the subsequent four years he spent there; his health improved on his return to the United States. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Zanzibar on April 12, 1874, departing around the same time for his post. He never married and he died of dysentery in Zanzibar on October 12, 1874, at the age of just 22.

[Sources: “Ballard,” The Christian Leader, New York, NY, November 21, 1874, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Thomas Biddle, Jr. was born in Pennsylvania in 1827. He married Sarah White, and they had five children. He became a lawyer in 1848 and served as U.S. Consul in Calcutta, India, from 1854 to 1855 and as U.S. Consul in Singapore from 1856 to 1858. He later served as U.S. special diplomatic agent to Cuba in 1869 but was transferred to El Salvador to serve as the U.S. Minister Resident (Chief of Mission). He was then appointed to be U.S. Minister Resident to Ecuador before dying of yellow fever in Guayaquil on May 7, 1875, at the age of 48. His remains were interred in the family plot in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, PA, on May 9, 1879.

[Sources: “The Hon. Thomas Biddle,” New York Daily Tribune, New York, NY, May 18, 1875, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; Thomas Biddle, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA, Findagrave.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

John Felix Flint was born in Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania. His father, Miles Standish Flint, was a farmer from Massachusetts who had been a merchant seaman in his youth, but his mother, Carmen Alcazar Flint, was born in Lima, Peru, likely arriving in the United States as a young adult. Flint studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College and became a doctor.

He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to La Union, El Salvador, on February 14, 1868. On September 17, 1875, Flint noticed the wife of John Harrison, the British Consul in La Union, struggling in the surf near Point Chiriqui at the entrance to the shark-infested harbor. Flint rushed to her rescue and held her above the waves for more than a half hour before he sank out of exhaustion. The tide suddenly turned and Mrs. Harrison was able to reach the shore. Flint’s remains were recovered and buried locally; he was 44 years old.

[Sources: “Death of Dr. J.F. Flint, United States Consul at La Union, San Salvador,” The Sun, New York, NY, September 29, 1875, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Phillip Clayton was born in Athens, Georgia in 1815. After graduating with honors from Franklin College (now the University of Georgia), he studied law and worked as the editor of the Athens Southern Whig. He later served for twelve years as second auditor of the Treasury and for four years as assistant secretary of the Treasury. Upon the secession of Georgia, Clayton left the Union and became assistant secretary of the Treasury of the Confederate States.

After the Civil War, Clayton worked at a Georgia savings bank before President Ulysses S. Grant named him U.S. Consul to Peru. Clayton served there for three years before his death of yellow fever on March 22, 1877.

[Source: Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Telegraph, April 12, 1877, Page 1]

Henry Sawyer, originally from Massachusetts, served as U.S. consul in Paramaribo, Suriname, for 23 years. Contemporary accounts note that in 1861, the Confederate privateer CSS Sumter commanded by Admiral Raphael Semmes, who was famous for successfully running the Union blockade of New Orleans during the war, came into port in Suriname for coal and supplies. In response, Consul Sawyer bought up all the coal in the city to prevent the Confederate privateer from acquiring any, and he also hired all of the small boats in the harbor to prevent supplies from being delivered to the ship. As a result, the Sumter was delayed in port for more than a week, instead of the few hours they had planned. Meanwhile, Consul Sawyer sent word to a U.S. ship at Cayenne that the Sumter was in Suriname and could be seized, but unfortunately, no action was taken. The U.S. commander in Cayenne was later relieved of duty for his failure to respond to the Consul’s request.

In May 1877, Sawyer was called to the port to take custody of a sailor as part of his official duties. The sailor struck him in the head, then beat him so severely that he died a few days later. Sawyer left behind a widow, but no children. He was 51 years old.

[Sources: The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, May 8, 1877; Der Deutsche Korrespondent, Baltimore, Maryland, May 11, 1877, Page 2; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Frank Eugene Frye was born in Lewiston, Maine, on December 30, 1846, to William and Millicent Mower Frye. As a young man, he moved to Nebraska, where he studied and practiced law. He later moved to Boston and served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was married to Flora Campbell Frye and had one child.

At the time of Frye’s appointment as U.S. Consul to Omoa, Honduras, his cousin, William P. Frye, was the Maine Attorney General (and much later, President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate). Frank Frye was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Omoa, Honduras on April 24, 1874, and lived there for nearly five years, involved in a shipping business in addition to his role as Consul. He died in May 1879 in Roatán, Honduras, after being sent there by his doctor to help cure a severe cold he contracted while on a trip delivering fruit to New Orleans and died of high fever on February 10, 1879. He was 32 years old. There is a cenotaph in his memory in Riverside Cemetery in Lewiston, Maine.

Note: While a subsequently discovered contemporary newspaper obituary said he died of a cold, he was inscribed on the AFSA Memorial Plaque based on a Department of State report that he died of “fever” -- a term in those reports that typically referred to a tropical disease.

[Sources: Department of State News Letter, September 1966, Page 52 (photo caption); The Sun-Journal, Lewiston, Maine, March 7, 1879, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Elephus Hibbard Rogers was born in Litchfield, New York, on January 12, 1830. He married Lucy Groff in 1851 and purchased a farm, which he worked until he and his wife moved to Nebraska. In Nebraska, he opened a real estate business and a bank in partnership with his brother, Lucius, which became the First National Bank of Fremont. Rogers moved between Florida and New Mexico between 1877 and 1880 and resigned from the bank due to illness.

He was appointed U.S. Consul to Vera Cruz, Mexico, on May 20, 1881. He died of yellow fever at post on August 1, 1881, without having yet taken charge. He was 51 years old. Besides his wife, he was survived by two of their three children, Ida and Bertha. He was buried in Ridge Cemetery in Fremont, Nebraska.

Note: The first name “Elphus” in his inscription on the AFSA Memorial Plaque was based on information available at the time that is contradicted by subsequently discovered official documentation.

[Sources: Eliphus Hibbert Rogers, Ridge Cemetery, Fremont, Nebraska, Findagrave.com; Congressional report at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-02028_00_00-025-0110-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-02028_00_00-025-0110-0000.pdf, Page 22; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Henry Highland Garnet was born into slavery in New Market, Maryland in 1815. His family escaped via the Underground Railroad and settled in New York City. Garnet began his college education at Noyes Academy, but a segregationist mob forced him to relocate to the Oneida Theological Institute. He was nonetheless renowned for his rhetorical talents.

After graduating, Garnet married, became a pastor at Liberty Street Presbyterian Church and began advocating for the eradication of slavery. His delivered his most famous abolitionist speech, Address to the Slaves of the United States of America or Call to Rebellion, to the Negro National Convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1843. Later, in 1865, he became the first black minister to preach to House of Representatives. He also aided in the Union effort by recruiting free black men to serve in the army.

In accordance with the aging Garnet’s final wish, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as U.S. minister and consul general at Liberia. Garnet only lived in the country for two months before his death on February 13, 1882. He was one of four U.S. ministers to Liberia who died of tropical disease between 1882 and 1893.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Highland_Garnet]

Alexis (also known as Alexander) Odiolio Kustel was born in 1842 in what was then Hungary (now Rusca Montana, Romania). His parents moved the family through Panama to San Francisco in 1852 during the California Gold Rush. He became a sea captain and resided in San Francisco with his mother and younger brothers, Oscar, Casimir, and Arpad, who were also sea captains, and was a member of the firm Wightman & Kustel, which traded in the southern Pacific islands. Kustel married Lizzie Fritz in San Francisco in 1872, and they had one daughter, Florence, who was born in 1880 in the Caroline Islands, a western Pacific archipelago north of New Guinea.

Alexis Kustel was appointed U.S. Consul to Apia, Samoa, on January 10, 1883. On June 24, 1883, he sailed from Apia to another island in Samoa aboard a leaky vessel. A violent storm arose, and the ship was never seen again. Kustel was 40 years old.

[Sources: “A Sailor’s Estate: The Will of Captain Kustel Admitted to Probate,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 1884, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records]

Jesse Hale Moore was born in Lebanon, Illinois in 1817. In his early years, he attended McKendree College, worked at as a schoolteacher and became a Methodist minister. He later served in the Union Army, serving in the Atlanta Campaign and the Battles of Chickamauga, Franklin and Nashville before retiring with the rank of brevet brigadier general.

A Republican, Moore was elected as a U.S. Representative from Illinois in 1869 and served as chair of the Committee on Invalid Pensions. He then became a U.S. pension agent before his 1881 appointment by President Chester A. Arthur as U.S. consul to Callao, Peru. Moore died at post of yellow fever two years later, on July 11, 1883.

[Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_H._Moore; The Buffalo (New York) Commercial, July 13, 1883, Page 3]

Seth Ledyard Phelps was born in Ohio in 1824. He was appointed a midshipman in the U.S. Navy in 1841 and served during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. Phelps was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy and later became an agent of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company at Acapulco, Mexico, where he was appointed to be a commercial agent on November 24, 1864, through December of the same year. He went to China and Japan with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and returned to Washington in 1873. In 1875, he was appointed to be the commissioner of the District of Columbia. Phelps married Eliza Maynadier, and they had one child, Sally.

In 1883, he became U.S. Minister (Chief of Mission) to Peru. He died of Oroya fever, a rare bacterial infection endemic in the Andes and also known as Carrion’s disease, which he contracted while on a hunting trip, and died on June 24, 1885. His remains were repatriated to Washington, and were interred in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

[Sources: The Knoxville Daily Journal, Knoxville, Kentucky, June 25, 1885, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Capt. Seth Ledyard Phelps, Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C., Findagrave.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records]

Moses Aaron Hopkins was born in slavery on December 25, 1846, in Montgomery County, Virginia. During the Civil War, he escaped and worked as a cook in Union camps, where he also learned to read and write. After working aboard steamships on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for a time, Hopkins attended Avery College and graduated as valedictorian from Lincoln University near Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1874. In 1877, he was the first black graduate of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. He established a church and a school, Albion Academy, to educate formerly enslaved persons in Franklinton, North Carolina in 1877. With his wife, Carrie, he also founded the Freedman’s Friend newspaper.

Appointed by President Grover Cleveland, Hopkins was confirmed as U.S. Minister Resident (Chief of Mission) and Consul General to Monrovia, Liberia, on January 13, 1886, by the U.S. Senate. Hopkins arrived in Monrovia on December 9, 1885, and died at his post in Monrovia in August 1886 at the age of 39 of “African fever” (19th-century term usually referring to malaria). He was one of four U.S. ministers to Liberia who died of tropical disease between 1882 and 1893.

[Sources: Moses Aaron Hopkins, Findagrave.com; “Death of Rev. Moses A. Hopkins, Minister and Consul General from the United States to Liberia,” New Castle News, New Castle, Pennsylvania, August 12, 1886, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_A._Hopkins; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records]

John Thomas Miller was born May 1, 1861, in Chester County, South Carolina. He became a Vice Consul in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 1, 1887, but died of smallpox just weeks later on July 28. Miller had been resident in Brazil since 1867, and most of his family relocated to Sao Paolo in 1868. He was aged 22 at the time of his death and was buried in a “grove overlooking the beautiful bay of Rio.”

[Sources: The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, August 5, 1887, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Yorkville Enquirer, York, South Carolina, July 20, 1887, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Jones, Hazel Parker, Descendants of James Boyd Magill 1799–1880, Jacobs Brothers, Clinton, South Carolina, 1963, Pages 30–31, online at https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/G004370.pdf; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records]

Allen Bunn Francis was born on April 12, 1815, in Wethersfield, Connecticut. A printer by trade, he first moved with his brother to Springfield, Illinois, where he published the Springfield Journal, serving as both editor and typesetter. A longtime friend of Abraham Lincoln, he served as paymaster of the U.S. Army and was later appointed by President Lincoln as U.S. Consul in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where, as a relatively early settler, he had a printing business and served twice as U.S. Consul; first from 1861 to 1869 and again from 1877 to June 1884, when he was transferred to represent the United States as Consul in Port Stanley and St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada.

In St. Thomas on July 15, 1887, he was present at the largest train disaster in the history of the southwest region of that province. He was apparently on his way to the crash site to aid or check for possible American citizen casualties when he was run over by a fire department hose-reel cart responding to the crash. He died in St. Thomas of his injuries on August 4, 1887. He was survived by his wife, Cecelia Duncan Francis, and four adult children. He is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia.

[Sources: Hon. Allen Bunn Francis, Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 227452957; The Morning Journal-Courier, New Haven, Connecticut, August 8, 1887, online at Newspapers.com; “United States Consul Dead,” Lincoln Nebraska State Journal, August 12, 1887, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Allen Francis, Columbia Magazine, Fall 2015, Pages 22-27, online at https://www.washingtonhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/29-3-fall-1.pdf; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

David Thayer Bunker was born in Charleston, Maine in 1836. He briefly attended Harvard Medical School, worked for several years in the Boston Custom House and finally joined the Union Army. He fought at Baton Rouge, Port Hudson and the Red River Campaign before retiring with the rank of major.

After the war, Bunker returned to the Custom House and later found work at a Boston Bank. In 1874, he became president of the Regimental Association.

Bunker was eventually appointed U.S. consul for Demerara, British Guinea. He died there on February 5, 1888.

Victor Francis Warren Stanwood was born in about 1839 on the Isle of Wight in England. He was appointed to be a U.S. consular agent in Andakabe, Madagascar on October 12, 1881. His post was on Madagascar's west coast, while his supervising U.S. consul was at the principal port of Tamatave, on the east coast.

Stanwood produced and forwarded reports on the slave trade to the consul in Tamatave urging U.S. intervention to eliminate the slave trade in the Andakabe region. He detailed information on the slave traders and their use of the U.S. flag and recounted repeated threats on his life from the traders. The newly arrived consul sat on Stanwood's reports, commenting in a report of his own to Washington in February 1888 only that he had to be "prudent" about transmitting the Stanwood reports because the author had "a reputation for exaggeration." Finally, in October, he sent the reports forward—but before they arrived in Washington, Stanwood was dead.

On November 5, 1888, Consular Agent Stanwood tried to prevent Captain Leon de Rathier Duverge from slave trading on the Coast. Duverge whipped out a pistol in anger and shot the consul, killing him. The exact circumstances of the incident are unclear. Stanwood had carried arms while working for months and was investigating "irregularities" relating to a schooner near Andakabe. The ship reportedly was partly loaded with firearms, and it was there that Stanwood was shot by Captain Duverge. The news that Mr. Stanwood had died did not reach the consul in Tamatave until December 9. Captain Duverge was never charged in the killing.

Interestingly, Stanwood himself was the subject of an arrest warrant in Melbourne, Australia, in 1879. The warrant stated that he was “formerly second mate of the ship Lucy Turner, trading on the African coast, and subsequently was captain of the schooner Madeline which vessel he sold at Adelaide about 1877. In September 1878 he was captain of a barque Courier, and unlawfully sold the same at Wellington, New Zealand.” Stanwood was described as about 5 feet 2 inches tall, with iron-grey hair, a dark beard and moustache, light grey eyes, and elaborately tattooed arms. Records from the United States indicate that at the time the Australian arrest warrant was issued, Stanwood was living in San Francisco, California.

[Source: David T. Jones, “Diplomacy's Fallen Heroes,” State Magazine, May 1998, online at https://1997-2001.state.gov/www/publications/statemag/statemag_may98/feature3.html; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records]

Alexander G. Clark, Sr., was born February 25, 1826, in Washington County, Pennsylvania to parents who had been freed from slavery. At age 13, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to live with an uncle and learn to become a barber, and two years later, he started working on the steamboat George Washington. An African-American Civil Rights leader and successful businessman, lawyer, editor, and speaker, he was known for his lawsuit to gain admission for his daughter at a public school in Muscatine, Iowa, and the case Clark v. Board of School Directors achieved a constitutional ruling for integration from the Iowa Supreme Court in 1868—86 years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Clark was also a leader in winning a state constitutional amendment that gained the right for African Americans in Iowa to vote.

In 1873, President Grant offered Clark an appointment as consul to Aux Cayes, Haiti, but he declined because the pay was too low. Clark moved to Chicago for a time, and in the late 1880s purchased the newspaper The Conservator, where he also served as an editor. Clark was married to Catherine Griffin Clark in Muscatine, Iowa, but she died in 1879. They had five children, three of whom lived to adulthood.

Clark was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as Minister Resident (Chief of Mission) and Consul General to Monrovia on August 16, 1890. He died on May 31, 1891, at his post in Monrovia of a tropical fever. He was one of four U.S. ministers to Liberia who died of tropical disease between 1882 and 1893. His remains were repatriated, and he is buried in the family plot in Greenwood Cemetery in Muscatine, Iowa, where his house has been preserved and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

[Sources: Alexander G. Clark Sr., Greenwood Cemetery, Muscatine, Iowa, Findagrave.com; Wikipedia; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records]

Thomas McLean Newson of St. Paul, Minnesota was born in New York on February 22, 1827. He was known as a pioneer journalist and politician. After he spent several years in a boarding school following the death of his parents when he was young, he became an apprentice to a printer in New Haven, Connecticut. He started a newspaper in Birmingham, Connecticut. In 1853, he moved to Minnesota. Newson was an abolitionist and a Republican and served as Minnesota’s only delegate to the Pittsburgh Presidential convention in 1884. He married Harriett Brown in Albany, New York in May 1857. In 1862, he was appointed commissary inspector of the U.S. Army and was awarded for meritorious conduct in 1865.

Newson was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Malaga, Spain on July 11, 1890. He died three years later, on April 1, 1893, of smallpox during an epidemic at his post. He left a wife and five children in St. Paul. He was buried in Malaga, but there is a cenotaph in his honor in Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[Sources: Maj. Thomas McLean Newson, Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul, Minnesota, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 145618016; Compilation of Reports of Committee on Foreign Relations: 1789-1901, Volume 3, United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Page 805; Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society 1905, Pages 270-271; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William D. McCoy was born on November 17, 1853, in Cambridge City, Indiana and was educated in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked as county superintendent of schools in Helena, Arkansas, and then served as principal of several schools in Indianapolis, Indiana. McCoy ran unsuccessfully as Republican candidate for the Indiana State Legislature. He married Celeste Walker in 1879 in Indianapolis.

In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison nominated McCoy to be Minister Resident (Chief of Mission equivalent) and Consul General to Monrovia, Liberia. He was confirmed on January 11, 1892. He died in Monrovia on May 16, 1893, of a fever, just four months after his arrival and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. He was one of four U.S. ministers to Liberia who died of tropical disease between 1882 and 1893. His widow, Celeste McCoy, established the McCoy fund for black pupils in Indianapolis with $1500 from her husband’s estate. The fund is still administered by public schools in Indianapolis today.

[Sources: William D. McCoy, Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 45968151; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John R. Meade of New London, Connecticut, was a printer active in Democratic party politics. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Santo Domingo on November 1, 1893, and departed for post on November 21, 1893. He died at post just two months later on January 21, 1894, of yellow fever. While Meade’s wife and daughters stayed behind in Connecticut, Meade’s son Richard was with his father in Santo Domingo, where he was enrolled in college to learn Spanish and French. Richard returned to the United States on February 14, but local law did not permit the repatriation of his father’s remains due to the yellow fever diagnosis.

[Sources: “Consul Meade is Comfortable,” The Day, New London, Connecticut, January 3, 1894, Page 8, online at Newspapers.com; “Died of Yellow Fever: Therefore Consul Meade’s Body Cannot Be Brought Home,” The Day, New London, Connecticut, January 24, 1894, Page 8, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Alexander Lyon Pollock was born in Hungary on March 31, 1852. He graduated from a school in Prague and emigrated to the United States as a young adult. He was appointed clerk to General Hunt of the U.S. Army and moved to Nebraska as a signal officer. In Washington, D.C., he served as an editor for the International Meteorological Bulletin. He married Verona E. Larkin, and they had at least three children, one of whom, Catherine, lived to adulthood.

Appointed from Utah, Pollock was confirmed as U.S. Consul to San Salvador, El Salvador, on September 18, 1893. He served from December 26, 1893, and died there of yellow fever on September 17, 1894. He was reburied at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1912.

[Sources: Alexander Lyon Pollock, Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 92166050; “Alexander Pollock Dead,” Omaha World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, September 18, 1894, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Frederick A.H. Munchmeyer was born in 1853 in West Virginia and was a merchant in Parkersburg. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul to San Salvador, El Salvador, on February 5, 1895, and served from April 4, 1895, and died on September 11, 1895, almost exactly one year after his predecessor’s death in San Salvador of the same illness and the day before his wife, Frances, also died of yellow fever. They had two surviving children, who were sent home to Parkersburg to live with relatives. Munchmeyer was succeeded by his cousin, Otto, as consul in San Salvador. Otto Munchmeyer sadly committed suicide at the same post in 1897, which his family attributed at the time to be linked to possible financial problems.

[Sources: The News and Advance, Lynchburg, Virginia, July 28, 1897, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; “Fatalities,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, July 28, 1897, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Hiram Richard Lott was born on April 2, 1825, in Covington County, Mississippi. He married Mary Elizabeth Willians in 1847 and they had six children before he moved his family to Floyd, Louisiana, in the mid-1850s. There, Lott became a planter and was involved in politics, serving in the Louisiana State Senate from 1859 to 1867 and 1879 to 1895 and eventually became the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana from 1893 to 1995.

Lott was appointed to be U.S. Consul in Managua, Nicaragua, on January 9, 1895. He arrived at post on April 20, 1895, and died less than six weeks later on June 6 of dysentery at age 66. He was initially buried at the Foreigners’ Cemetery in Managua, but his remains were repatriated two years later and interred in the Lott Family Cemetery in Floyd, Louisiana.

[Sources: Col Hiram Richard Lott Sr, Lott Family Cemetery, Floyd, Louisiana, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 88921061; “The Details of Colonel Lott’s Death,” The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, July 12, 1895, Page 8, online at Newspapers.com; “Hiram R. Lott” on Wikipedia.org; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

James C. Fox was born in Rochester, New York. He was confirmed as U.S. Consul in Antigua on September 19, 1893, and served from October 30, 1893, to October 21, 1895, when he died at post of yellow fever after an illness of four days.

[Sources: Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, November 8, 1895, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John Berry Gorman, Jr. was born in Tallbotton, Georgia in 1839 and became a planter and journalist. In 1884, he published A Tour around the World or Sketches of Travel in Eastern and Western Hemispheres, an account of his many international journeys. He served as U.S. consul to Matamoros, Mexico, from 1894 until his death from malaria on September 6, 1896.

[Source: John Berry Gorman Jr., Pantheon Municipal El Saucito, San Louis Potosi, Mexico, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 116081056.]

Thomas Reuben Gibson was born July 5, 1857, in Warrenton, Georgia. He was a graduate of the University of Georgia worked as the editor of the Augusta Evening News. He lived in Richmond, Georgia in the 1880s, where he resided with his uncle, an attorney, and with his mother and younger brother. Gibson was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Beirut on September 28, 1893. He served at his post from January 9, 1894, until his death from smallpox on September 20, 1896.

[Sources: The Streater Free Press, Streator, Illinois, September 25, 1896, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Albert Shelby Willis was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky in 1843. He graduated from University of Louisville School of Law in 1866, was admitted to the bar and served for three years as prosecuting attorney for Jefferson County, Kentucky. Between 1877 and 1887, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat and the chair of the Committee on Rivers and Harbors.

President Grover Cleveland appointed Willis U.S. minister to Hawaii in 1893. Willis was assigned to convince Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s recently deposed queen, to provide amnesty to her enemies if the president restored her rule. President Cleveland reneged on his promise when the Hawaiian President Sanford B. Dole refused to step down, and the mission became a failure. Nevertheless, Willis remained the U.S. Minister to the then-independent country for the next four years before his death on January 6, 1897.

[Source: “Albert S. Willis” on Wikipedia.org]

William Ward Ashby was born in Washington, D.C., in 1849. He married Clara Morton in Virginia in 1877, and they lived in Spotsylvania County with their two children, Morton and Nance, where the family ran a retail grocery store. Ashby was involved in Republican politics in Virginia during the Civil War, in opposition to much of his family. He was a nephew of Gen. Turner Ashby and worked as a correspondent for the Norfolk Landmark and other newspapers.

Ashby was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Colon, Colombia (now Colon, Panama) and served there from November 16, 1897, to January 17, 1898, when he drowned in a boating accident. Ashby was on a boating trip with the German consul, Dr. Hafemann, and five others when their boat was swamped at sea during a storm and all aboard drowned. He was 49 years old. The presence of the German Consul suggests this was a representational activity in the line of duty.

[Sources: “Two Consuls Perish,” The Washington Post, January 18, 1898, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “A Party of Six Perish,” The Selma Times, Selma, Alabama, January 18, 1898, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; “Consulate Vacated by Death,” Dixon Evening Telegraph, Dixon, Illinois, January 18, 1989, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Robert Alexander Moseley, Jr., of Montevallo, Alabama, was born on July 14, 1841, in Shelby County, Alabama and attended Howard College. He studied medicine with his father and also at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He fought with the Confederate Army, and was seriously wounded in the battle of Murfreesboro, after which he returned home and started a pharmacy business. He was elected mayor of his hometown in 1868 and established five different newspapers across Alabama in the next decade. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention on several occasions. Moseley first married Josephine Ware in 1862; his second wife was Ella Lowery, whom he married in 1892. He had one daughter who died young with his first wife, but no other children.

Moseley was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Singapore on January 7, 1899. He died of malaria and pneumonia at Yokohama, Japan, on November 14, 1900, after being sent there on doctor’s orders to recuperate from a malaria infection. He was 59 years old. Moseley was so ill on arrival in Japan that he left the ship on a stretcher. Moseley is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Talladega, Alabama.

[Sources: “Robert Alexander Moseley Jr.,” Oak Hill Cemetery, Talladega, Alabama, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 6855191; “Dr. R.A. Moseley, Consul at Singapore, is Dead,” The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, November 16, 1900, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “Dr. Moseley’s Last Hours,” Our Mountain Home, Talladega, Alabama, December 5, 1900, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Rounsevelle Wildman, Sr. was born in Batavia, New York in 1864. He graduated from Syracuse University, moved west and served in the Idaho delegation to Congress. His efforts helped the then-territory of Idaho to become a state.

Wildman served as the U.S. consul to Singapore; Barmen, Germany; and Hong Kong. He wrote several accounts of his experiences, including China’s Open Door: A Sketch of Chinese Life and History and Tales of the Malayan Coast: From Penang to the Philippines.

While en route from Hong Kong to the inauguration of President William McKinley in Washington, D.C., Wildman’s ship, the S.S. City of Rio de Janiero, crashed on a submerged reef in San Francisco Bay. Wildman and his family were lost in the shipwreck.

[Source: “Rounsevelle Wildman” on Wikipedia.org]

Thomas Theodore Prentis was born in Royal Oak, Michigan in 1844 and was raised in Vermont. He served as a sharpshooter in the Union Army during the Civil War, and married Clara Frye, the daughter of a wealthy sea captain, in the Seychelles while he served there as U.S. Consul for nine years. Clara was born in Port Louis, Mauritius in 1851.

Prentis was confirmed as U.S. Consul to Martinique on December 6, 1900, serving there from April 1, 1901, to May 8, 1902, when he was killed by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pelée along with his wife, their two daughters, Louise Lydia and Christiana Hazel, Vice Consul Amédée Testart, and nearly 29,000 others. Prentis had previously served as U.S. Consul in Mahé, Seychelles; Port Louis, Mauritius; Rouen, France; and Batavia (Jakarta), Java, prior to his assignment to Martinique.

When Mt. Pelée erupted on May 8, 1902, the U.S. Consulate and the Prentis family were buried in the pyroclastic surge from the volcano. There was no time to escape, and the Prentis family is believed to have died instantly. Thomas and Clara Prentis were aged 56 and 51 and their daughters were 22 and 14 years old at the time of the eruption. Their remains were never identified. The Prentis family also had two surviving adult sons, James and Thomas, who worked for Standard Oil Company. Neither of them was present in Martinique at the time of the eruption.

[Sources: Bent, William, “The Unlucky Consul: Thomas Prentis and the 1902 Martinique Disaster,” Foreign Service Journal, May 2020, online at afsa.org; Perrot-Minnot, Sebastien, “Memorializing the U.S. Consular Presence in Martinique,” Foreign Service Journal, November 2022, Pages 64-66, online at afsa.org; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Vice Consul Joseph “Amédée” Testart Grosval was born to French immigrant parents in Louisiana on March 3, 1848. By 1876, he was working as a clerk in a loan office in New Orleans. He married Leonie B. Villeneuve on January 31, 1874, in New Orleans. They had three children, Marie “Louise,” Charles, and Joseph, who died in infancy.

Testart was appointed Vice Consul in Martinique on June 8, 1898. He died on May 8, 1902, following the eruption of Mt. Pelée, along with Consul Thomas Prentis and his family, and nearly 29,000 others. When Mt. Pelée erupted, Testart did not die immediately. He managed to make it on board the Roddam, one of the few ships in the harbor, only to fall back into the sea, dead with exhaustion shortly after he reached the ship. He was 54 years old. His daughter, Marie Louise also died in the eruption along with her young family at the age of 26. Testart’s wife and son Charles were in New Orleans at the time of the eruption and survived.

[Sources: Consolation Prize Podcast, Episode 8, “Eden to Ashes,” available online at r2studios.org; Perrot-Minnot, Sebastien, “Memorializing the U.S. Consular Presence in Martinique,” Foreign Service Journal, November 2022, Pages 64-66, online at afsa.org; “In the St. Pierre Consulate Before the Great Eruption,” Eagle River Review, Eagle River, Wisconsin, May 26, 1902, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Bent, William, “The Unlucky Consul: Thomas Prentis and the 1902 Martinique Disaster,” Foreign Service Journal, May 2020, online at afsa.org; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Thomas Nast was born in Landau, Germany in 1840. His family moved to New York City when he was still young, and his aptitude for drawing inspired him to attend the National Academy of Design and begin working for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and, later, Harper’s Weekly.

Nast quickly became a celebrated cartoonist – the “Father of the American Cartoon” – best known for his creation of modern version of Santa Claus, Uncle Sam and the symbols for both major political parties: the Republican Elephant and the Democratic Donkey. His cartoon campaign was responsible for the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful and corrupt leader of Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine, and aided in the election of Ulysses S. Grant as president.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Nast as U.S. consul to Guayaquil, Ecuador. During a deadly yellow fever outbreak, Nast stayed in the city helping members of diplomatic missions and businesses flee the epidemic. He became infected and died on December of that year.

[Source: “Thomas Nast” on Wikipedia.org]

Benjamin Johnston of Iowa was born March 9, 1845, in Van Buren County, Iowa. He served as lieutenant of a Union Army Colored Troops from 1861 to August 1865. After returning home from the war, Johnston became a salesman for a drug company, after which he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Iowa. He was elected County Attorney in Van Burean County Iowa in 1886. He married Ruth Anna Purviance, and they had four daughters and two sons. His wife and one of his daughters both died in 1901.

Johnston was appointed U.S. Consul in La Ceiba, Honduras, on July 1, 1902, serving there from October 17, 1902, until his death of dysentery on January 7, 1903, at age 61. He previously served as U.S. Consul in Utilla, Honduras, from February 4 to April 2, 1898. Following his death in 1903, local law, along with a period of unrest, prevented immediate repatriation; therefore his remains were not returned to the United States until October 1910. He is buried at Purdom Cemetery in Keosauqua, Iowa.

Note: His inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque lists his name as “Johnson” but official records found later say “Johnston.”

[Sources: “Benjamin Johnston,” Purdom Cemetery, Keosauqua, Iowa, online at Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 62237197; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records.]

John Carter Ingersoll was born March 20, 1856, in Peoria, Illinois. He married Lalla Knode Burrows in Washington, D.C., in 1884; they had two surviving children, Robert and Kathryn. Ingersoll was the son of U.S. Representative Ebon Clark Ingersoll of Illinois and nephew of the famous abolitionist and orator Robert G. Ingersoll. After his father was elected to Congress and the family moved to Washington, D.C., Ingersoll attended Cornell University, where he was the class president of 1882, and studied law in Washington, D.C., where he was admitted to the bar.

He was appointed U.S. Consul in Copenhagen on December 18, 1897, and served there until June 11, 1900, when he was appointed U.S. Consul to Cartagena, Colombia. He died in Colon, Colombia (now Panama) on June 6, 1903, of dysentery while in transit to the United States for a leave of absence. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

[Sources: “John Carter Ingersoll,” Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C., Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 37241370; “Death of Consul John C. Ingersoll,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 8, 1903, Page 16, online on Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Frederick Havemeyer II was born in New York City on May 25, 1874, the youngest son of Henry and Jennie Havemeyer, and part of a wealthy extended family. Havemeyer’s parents had a sugar manufacturing business. Havemeyer attended New York University (where he was later founder of the Havemeyer Laboratory) and, independently wealthy, lived abroad for several years, spending time in both London and Calcutta, India. He was in Calcutta in 1900 when his older brother, William Moller Havemeyer, who was divorced from actress Clara Stevens, died of a stroke at the age of 35 while working in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Havemeyer obtained a passport at the U.S. Embassy in 1901 for the purposes of living in Persia “for a few years.” Around the same time, he was recorded as staying as a guest with his sister’s family at Broomley House in Bonhill, Dumbartonshire, Scotland.

He served as U.S. Consular Agent in Bassorah, Turkey (now Basra, Iraq) from February 8, 1904, until his death on June 25, 1904, of cholera. After he died in Basra, the Department of State posted advertisements in New York newspapers seeking next of kin; his only living immediate family at that time were his sisters, Blanche and Edythe, both living in Scotland.

[Sources: “Official,” New York Tribune, August 8, 1904, Page 7, online at Newspapers.com; “Clara Bloodgood,” on Wikipedia.org; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records.]

Philip Carroll of New York was born in 1857. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1879, Carroll served in the Civil War as a drummer boy, and fought in the bloody Battle of Olustee on February 20, 1864 -- the largest battle fought in Florida during the war.

He served a long career in the consular service of the United States, joining in 1879, and served in Palermo, Demerara (now Guyana), Grenville (Quebec), Monterrey (Mexico), Aguas Calientes (Mexico), and Manzanillo (Mexico) prior to his death of a fever in Manzanillo, Mexico, on December 14, 1906, at the age of 58. Dr. Carroll was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: The Washington, Post, December 16, 1906, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; “Former Consul Buried,” The Washington Post, January 27, 1907, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records; Arlington National Cemetery records.]

British merchant and diplomat William Horwood Stuart was born in Harrow, London, in 1857. In 1873, he served as private secretary to his uncle, the British Consul General for Russian ports on the Black Sea in Odessa, Ukraine. By the early 1890s, Stuart moved to Batum, Russia (now Batumi, Georgia). He was appointed as U.S. Vice Consul in 1904 and by 1906 was also the acting British Consul. He was also named Japanese Consul, but his appointment was deferred at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. Representing the United States in Batum, he lobbied on behalf of U.S. interests in the region, particular copper mining, and represented several British companies, in addition to being one of the largest ship brokers and exporters in Batum.

He was ambushed by assailants and shot three times from behind a tree on his way home after an evening dining with a friend on May 20, 1906. He was taken to a nearby military barracks for medical attention but died within the hour. The attack was likely a murder carried out for personal reasons and possibly by paid assassins. By May 31, 1906, two men had been arrested for the crime, but it is unclear if they were ever convicted. Stuart was not married and was survived by his mother and two brothers in London. He was 49 years old.

[Sources: “William Horwood Stuart” on Wikipedia.org; “American Consul is Assassinated,” Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, Poughkeepsie, New York, May 22, 1906, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Benjamin H. Ridgely was born in Caroline County, Maryland, in 1861. He attended law school, but ultimately pursued a career in journalism. He founded the Louisville Truth and wrote The Comedies of a Consulate, and married Sophronia “Fronia” Brannin in 1861; she died in 1889. He then married Kate Eaches in 1891. Ridgely served as U.S. Consul in Geneva from 1893 to 1900, in Malaga from 1900 to 1902; in Nantes, France from 1902 to 1904, and Barcelona from 1904 to 1908.

He took charge as U.S. Consul in Mexico City on June 19, 1908. On October 10, 1908, he, his wife Kate, and his mother were in a Pullman sleeper car in Monterrey on a layover while traveling between Laredo and Mexico City when he “died suddenly” around midnight. Contemporary press reporting did not specify the cause of death. A 1929 American Foreign Service Journal article states that he died of heart failure and that “the doctor had warned him that the altitude would be dangerous for him, and the Department had promised to consider him for another post.” In inscribing his name on the original AFSA plaque in 1933, the cause of death was listed as exhaustion. Mrs. Ridgely and their daughter, Louise, accompanied his remains to the United States where he was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.

[Sources: “Benjamin Ridgely Dies at Monterrey,” The Gazette, York, Pennsylvania, October 11, 1908, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “For Burial Here,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, October 14, 1908, Page 10, online at Newspapers.com; American Foreign Service Journal, May 1929, Page 169; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Arthur Sanford Cheney was born in Joliet, Illinois on October 4, 1869, and moved with his parents, Dr. Benjamin Hicks Cheney and Sarah Austin Cheney, to Chicago as a small child. Following the great fire of 1871, the family relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, where Cheney was raised. He graduated Yale Medical School, studied in Vienna, practices medicine in New Haven for 10 years before becoming U.S. Vice Consul to Reichenberg, Austria (now Liberec, Czechia) from November 1906 to August 1907. While there, he met and married Laura Anna Pfeiffer.

Cheney was appointed U.S. Consul to Messina, Italy, where he served from January 1, 1908, until his death in the earthquake on December 28, 1908, that destroyed the U.S. Consulate and much of Messina. The Messina earthquake of 1908 was estimated at a 7.1 on the Richter Scale and resulted in the deaths of between 75,000 and 82,000 people, including the Cheneys and former U.S. Vice Consul and correspondent for the Associated Press Joseph Pierce and his family, who were crushed to death in their damaged home that was brought down by the tsunami that followed the earthquake. The remains of Cheney and his wife were recovered in the ruins of the U.S. Consulate by the crew of the U.S. battleship Illinois, and were repatriated to the United States for burial at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. Cheney was 39 years old.

Note: His 1933 inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque includes middle initial “A” but official records discovered decades later say “S.”

[Sources: “1908 Messina Earthquake” on Wikipedia.org; “Dr. Arthur Sanford Cheney, Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 136987818; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John Webster Gourley was born in Boerne, Texas, on April 7, 1886, as one of eight children of Thomas and Sally Gourley, who owned a ranch. He moved to El Paso at the age of 20 and worked at the local post office before was appointed by President Howard Taft as U.S. vice consul to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – the youngest vice consul at the time at the age of 21. He served there from April 11, 1907, until his death on May 16, 1910. Gourley apparently contracted smallpox while visiting his brother who was recovering from smallpox in nearby Ysleta (El Paso, Texas) where he was a customs inspector. A third brother, who was vaccinated against smallpox, took care of him during his illness, but Gourley did not recover. Gourley was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in El Paso without a funeral service due to the contagious nature of his illness.

Note: His 1933 inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque was presumably based on the assumption that he contracted smallpox in Mexico.

[Sources: “John W Gourley,” Evergreen Cemetery, El Paso, Texas, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 126651458; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Theodore Cushing Hamm was born in Coaticook, Quebec, in 1882 and raised in Newport, Vermont. He studied at the University of Colorado and at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He married Clara M. Parker on June 9, 1906, in Washington, D.C. and they had two surviving children, Vera and Betty.

Hamm was appointed U.S. Consul in Durango, Mexico, on August 19, 1911. He was there in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution when it was under siege by revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa, and he received accolades for his reporting to Washington during those events. Hamm died of smallpox at his post on November 6, 1914. He was survived by his wife and two daughters in California and his mother in Dixville, Quebec. He was 32 years old.

[Sources: “American Consul at Durango is Dead,” The Montreal Star, November 17, 1914, Page 19, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Robert Ney McNeely was born in Monroe, North Carolina on November 12, 1883, as one of eleven children of Robert and Henrietta McNeely. McNeely worked as a rural schoolteacher and mail carrier until he studied law and was admitted to the bar at Monroe, North Carolina, in 1907. In 1909, he was elected to represent Union County in the North Carolina House of Representatives while studying for a law degree at the University of North Carolina. In 1914, he was elected to the North Carolina Senate.

He took the exam for appointment to the U.S. Consular Service in 1915 and was selected to be U.S. consul at Aden. On December 30, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed McNeely’s ship, the Persia, off the coast of Crete enroute to his post in Aden and sank in less than five minutes. McNeely was last seen in the water, where he and 384 others died. McNeely was 32 years old. He was engaged to be married at the time.

[Sources: “The Persia Torpedoed Without Warning, Says Consul Skinner,” The New York Times, January 2, 1915, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Robert Ney McNeely, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 67275414; “Robert Ney McNeely” on Wikipedia.org, Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Charles Patrick McKiernan was born in Naugatuck, Connecticut on February 13, 1887. After graduating from Yale in 1909, he moved first to New York, then began his career with the Department of State as a student interpreter in China in 1911, serving in multiple consular capacities in Mukden (Shenyang), Tientsin (Tianjin), Canton (Guangzhou), and Chungking (Chongqing), where he died of smallpox on May 28, 1916, at the age of 29. He never married, and his remains were repatriated for burial at St. James Cemetery in Naugatuck, Connecticut. He left his widowed mother and four siblings.

[Sources: “Donner, Fred, “Overland from China,” The Foreign Service Journal, April 1985, Page 38; “Charles Patrick McKiernan.” Saint James Cemetery, Naugatuck, Connecticut, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 83759788; “Charles P. McKiernan,” Norwich Bulletin, Norwich, Connecticut, June 3, 1916, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Charles Frederick Brissel was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 29, 1880, and was raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and was an instructor at Hill’s Institute in Honolulu from 1906 to 1909 before entering the consular service. He traveled to Amoy, China, to teach but after three months was made Vice Consul. He served in that role from April 29, 1910, to April 24, 1914.

He then served in Baghdad from August 1, 1914, until his death on October 31, 1916, of typhoid fever at the age of 36. He was survived by his parents and three brothers. While Brissel was originally buried in Baghdad, there are grave markers in both Baghdad and in Valleau Cemetery in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and contemporary newspaper accounts indicate that the Department of State repatriated his remains.

Note: His 1933 inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque lists the cause of death as cholera, but contemporary press reporting discovered decades later says typhoid fever.

[Sources: “Charles F. Brissel,” New York Herald, New York, NY, November 9, 1916, Page 7, online at Newspapers.com; “U.S. Consul Dead in Bagdad,” The New York Times, November 8, 1916, Page 13, online at Newspapers.com; “Promising Career Ended,” The Ridgewood Herald, Ridgewood, New Jersey, November 9, 1916, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; “Charles Frederick Brissel, Valleau Cemetery, Ridgewood, New Jersey, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 43609232; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Alfred Louis Moreau Gottschalk was born in New York on February 8, 1873, to Gaston and Louise (Boucher) Gottschalk. He was a sugar grower and newspaper correspondent with the U.S. Army in Cuba during the Spanish-American War prior to joining the Department of State. Gottschalk served as U.S. Consul (and later, Consul General) in Callao, Peru, from 1903 to 1905, as Consul General in Mexico City from 1905 to 1908, as Consul General at Large from 1908 to 1914, and finally as Consul General at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 1915 to February 10, 1918. He decided to leave Rio de Janeiro to offer his services to the Army in World War One.

Gottschalk left Rio de Janeiro on February 15, 1918, aboard the USS Cyclops, which was carrying a load of manganese from Brazil enroute to Baltimore. The ship traveled from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, and made an unscheduled stop in Barbados on March 3 and 4 to take on supplies and manage water on the ship that was above the Plimsoll line on the ship, indicating that the ship was overloaded. Although due to arrive in Baltimore on March 13, the USS Cyclops was never seen again and was declared lost and all hands deceased on June 1, 1918, by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Consul General Gottschalk was 45 years old.

Speculation about the disappearance of the USS Cyclops was rampant in the United States during wartime, with some noting that the ship’s allegedly bad-tempered captain was originally from Germany, and even that Gottschalk himself had a German-sounding name. The German Navy denied any involvement in the ship’s disappearance. The wreckage of the USS Cyclops has never been found and its disappearance remains a mystery, although several sister ships built in the same style and around the same time were later found to have structural weaknesses and were themselves lost, indicating that the USS Cyclops may have had a catastrophic structural failure, particularly if it encountered a storm enroute. Its loss with 306 passengers and crew remains the largest single loss of life in U.S. Naval history not involving direct combat.

[Sources: “USS Cyclops” on Wikipedia.org; “Alfred Louis Moreau Gottschalk,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 39469436; “Aldred L. Moreau Gottschalk,” The World-News, Roanoke, Virginia, May 13, 1918, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Sun-Journal, Lewiston Maine, April 15, 1918, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Thomas Maddin Summers was born in Tennessee on February 1, 1877. He attended Vanderbilt and Columbia Universities. Summers married Russian citizen Natalia Goraynoff, whom he met in Spain while assigned there with the Department of State. Their son, Lionel, was born in Madrid in 1905. Summers had a long career with the Department of State, beginning in 1899 when he joined the Department as a consular clerk, eventually working his way up to Vice Consul. In addition to Washington, Summers served in Madrid, Barcelona, Santos (Brazil), Belgrade, and Sao Paolo (Brazil).

Summers was appointed as U.S. Consul General to Moscow, Russia, on August 18, 1916. Serving during the chaotic Bolshevik Revolution, he collapsed and died on May 4, 1918, at the age of 41. A State Department announcement and a detailed firsthand report in the American Consular Bulletin attributed the death to exhaustion from prolonged overwork. One press report attributed the death to a brain hemorrhage. Summers was buried in Moscow.

[Sources: “An Officer Who Did His Job: Some Personal Recollections of Consul-General Summers’ Work in Russia,” American Consular Bulletin, December 1920, Pages 4-5, 8; “Strain Kills a Consul: The Washington Post, May 5, 1918, Page 78, online at Newspapers.com; “Maddin Summers is Buried at Moscow,” Knoxville Sentinel, May 8, 1918, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Consular Official Died of Hemorrhage,” The Oregon Daily Journal, Portland, Oregon, May 9, 1918, Page 15, online at Newspapers.com; “Maddin Summers Dies in Moscow,” The New York Times, May 6, 1918, Page 13, online at timesmachine.nytimes.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John Davis O’Rear was born in Audrain County, Missouri on March 21, 1870. His great-grandfather was Josiah Bartlett, signer of the Declaration of Independence. During his early years, O’Rear practiced law and served as the city attorney of Mexico, Missouri; as the prosecuting attorney of Audrain County, Missouri and a member of the State Democratic Committee of Missouri. O’Rear married Eugenia Bragg in July 1905 and they had one son, John, who was born in Bolivia in 1914.

In 1913, O’Rear was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Bolivia by President Woodrow Wilson. He championed U.S. commercial and trade interests in the country until his death of smallpox on July 14, 1918, at the age of 48. He was buried in Cementerio General de La Paz in La Paz, Bolivia.

[Sources: “John Davis O’Rear,” Cementerio General de La Paz, La Paz, Bolivia, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 62096149; Ancestry.com records.]

Luther Kimbell Zabriskie was born in Preston, Connecticut in 1879. He graduated from Yale College, studied at Edinburg University in Scotland and spent a year traveling across Europe and Russia. He was later elected as a Republican to the Connecticut General Assembly, served as secretary of the Preston School Committee and worked as a legislative reporter for the Norwich Bulletin.

Zabriskie entered the U.S. consular service in 1911. He served as a clerk, vice consul and later deputy consul at the U.S. Consulate General in Callao, Peru and a vice consul in Moscow and Mexico City. He wrote The Virgin Islands of the United States of America following a government mission to secure the purchase of St. Thomas from Denmark.

Zabriskie’s final post was as U.S. consul to Aguas Calientes, Mexico. He died there of smallpox on January 17, 1921.

Carl Raymond Loop was born in New Ross, Indiana, on September 10, 1877. He was married to Ethel Roberts; they had one daughter, Mary. Loop attended Butler College, where he participated in athletics and studied law. He entered the consular service in 1807 in Winnipeg as the vice and deputy consul, followed by an assignment to London as deputy consul general, and further postings as consul in Malta, Hamilton, Catania, and Malaga, Spain.

He contracted an infection while saving two Italian swimmers on the beach in Catania, Italy, in the summer of 1922. While returning to shore, he was caught in an undertow and pulled into a sewage trap, which caused a serious infection. Following several unsuccessful surgeries, Loop died on July 29, 1923, shortly after relocating from his post in Catania to Malaga, Spain. In his will, completed just two months before his death, he requested that his burial take place at the Providence Cemetery in Montgomery County, Indiana. Loop was 45 years old.

[Sources: “Heroic Act Results in Death of Carl R. Loop: The Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Indiana, August 18, 1923, Page 8, online at Newspapers.com; “Loop’s Death Due to Act of Heroism,” The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Indiana, August 18, 1923, Page 2; online at Ancestry.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Max David Kirjassof was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 2, 1888. His family emigrated to the United States in 1892, moving first to Waterbury, Connecticut, and then to Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Yale University in 1910. His friendship with President Taft’s son led to his appointment to the consulate in Yokohama after he passed the exam to join the consular service. A talented linguist, Kirjassof served as an interpreter at posts in Japan, Korea, and China prior to returning to Yokohama as acting U.S. Consul General.

He died on September 1, 1923, at the age of 35 when his hotel collapsed during the Great Kanto earthquake. His pregnant wife, Alice Ballantine Kirjassof, also died in the earthquake and tsunami that followed, which killed over 100,000 people. They had two children, William and David, who survived the earthquake and were adopted by their mother’s relatives, the Ballentines, after their parents were killed. Alice Ballantine Kirjassof’s brother, Joseph Ballantine, later served as consul general in Japan; another brother, Henry Ballantine, was offered a consular position in Alexandretta, Syria, that he declined.

[Sources: “Max David Kirjassoff, Negishi Foreign Cemetery, Yokohama, Japan, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 145598170; “U.S. Consul General at Yokohama Killed,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 6, 1923, Page 14, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Paul Emott Jenks was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1861. He graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and Yale College, where he played tennis, baseball and football. Jenks later worked for the Scovil Manufacturing Company and the Citizens Bank of Waterbury before taking a position in the city treasurer office in Brooklyn.

In 1896, Jenks moved to Japan to represent the J. B. Millet Company in Boston. He remained in the country as a commission merchant and as a secretary at the publishing office of the London Times.

Jenks eventually became a U.S. consular officer in Yokohama, Japan and was appointed U.S. vice consul to the nation in 1916. He died seven years later, on September 1, 1923, when the U.S. Consulate at Yokohama, Japan collapsed during the Great Kanto earthquake.

Clarence Cecil Woolard was born in Grafton, West Virginia, on February 12, 1873, to John and Matilda Woolard. Involved in railroad construction, Woolard moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where we worked as a railway conductor. He married Julia Loeper in Butte Montana in 1898; they later divorced. Woolard departed Idaho in 1905 and spent five years in Cerro de Pasco, Peru, and two years in Gonaives, Haiti before he became U.S. vice consul in Cape Haitien, Haiti in 1912. He also held the position of director general of the National Railroad in Haiti. Woolard died of malignant malaria at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on December 22, 1923, at the age of 50. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

[Sources: “American Consul Dies,” Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, December 23, 1923, Page 3, online at Newspapers.com; “Former Pocatello Man is Dead in Haiti,” Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah, December 20, 1923, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Robert Whitney Imbrie was born in Washington in 1883. He studied admiralty law and spent a brief period studying chimpanzees in the Congo before returning to the U.S. Imbrie served in the American Ambulance Corps during WWI, attained the rank of major and wrote Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance regarding his experiences.

Imbrie pursued diplomatic missions in post-revolution Russia and modern-day Turkey before serving as U.S. vice consul in Tehran. He was beaten to death by a radical religious mob on July 18, 1924 and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

William Treyanne Francis was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1869. He earned a law degree from St. Paul College of Law (now William Mitchell College of Law), worked in the legal department of North Pacific Railroad and opened his own law firm in Minnesota. As president elector of the Republican State Convention, Francis aided in the passage of an anti-lynching law in the Minnesota State Legislature.

In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Francis U.S. minister resident and consul general to Liberia. He died two years later of yellow fever on July 15, 1929.

William “Bill” Isaac Jackson was born on July 6, 1894, in Waterloo, Illinois. He married Lillian Hinnant in 1923 and served with the American Expeditionary Force in France from 1917 to 1919. After the war, he served as a clerk at the Treasury Department until joining the Department of State. Jackson served in Bahia, Brazil (1921-1923), Montreal (1924-1927), Torreon, Mexico (1929), Agua Prieta, Mexico (1929), and Havana (1930).

Jackson, his wife Lillian, and two other vice consuls and their spouses posted in Havana -- John Wainwright and Sydney Gest -- traveled together to Matanzas, Cuba. On November 2, 1930, while standing on a cliff overlooking the water, Lillian Jackson was swept off the cliff by a gust of wind. Her husband, along with Wainwright and Gest, jumped into the water after her in an attempt to rescue her. All drowned but Gest, who was pulled out of the water by a long pole that was found nearby by his wife. William and Lillian Jackson are buried in Waterloo City Cemetery in Waterloo, Iowa. They were 36 and 28 years old.

[Sources: “Consuls in Cuba Unable to Save Jackson’s Wife,” The Dispatch, Moline, Illinois, November 3, 1930, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Lieut. William Isaac Jackson,” Waterloo City Cemetery, Waterloo, Illinois, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 54500337; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

John “Jack” Tillotson Wainwright was born in Rye, New York on October 8, 1898. He was raised in Philadelphia, studied at Princeton (where he was roommates with future political leader Adlai Stevenson), and joined the consular service in 1928, serving in Sao Paolo, Guayaquil, Havana, and Matanzas, Cuba. Wainwright married Alice Cutts in in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1930, just five months before his death.

Wainwright and two other vice consuls and their spouses posted in Havana—William Jackson and Sydney Gest -- traveled together to Matanzas, Cuba. On November 2, 1930, while standing on a cliff overlooking the water, Lillian Jackson was swept off the cliff by a gust of wind. Her husband jumped into the water in an attempt to rescue her, and Wainwright and Gest jumped in to help them. All drowned but Gest, who was pulled out of the water by a long pole that was found nearby by his wife.

John Wainwright’s body was recovered and buried at Rhinebeck Cemetery in Rhinebeck, New York. Alice Cutts Wainwright became a public servant, an attorney, and environmentalist, and their son, named for his father, was born the year after his father’s death and also joined the State Department. Alice never remarried.

[Sources: “Big Bird: A protector of our habitat,” The Miami Herald, April 14, 1985, Page 1141, online at Newspapers.com; “John Tillotson Wainwright,” Rhinebeck Cemetery, Rhinebeck, New York, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 121788320; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Giles Russell Taggart was born in Clarksboro, New Jersey in 1870. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a law degree at George Washington University before serving in the Departments of Justice and Commerce and Labor.

Taggart later served as U.S. consul to Cornwall, Fort William, Port Arthur and Belize, British Honduras. A devastating hurricane in the latter nation caused him to fall ill with pneumonia – in addition to suffering from several broken ribs – and die on September 15, 1931.

In 1934, the U.S. House of Representatives honored Taggart’s heroism in saving others’ lives during the storm.

James Theodore Marriner was born in Portland, Maine in 1892. He graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard University before taking the Foreign Service entrance exam in 1918.

Marriner was later assigned to Stockholm, Bucharest, Bern, Paris and the following conferences: the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament Conference in Geneva, the Special Commission for the Preparation of a Draft Convention on the Manufacture of Arms in Geneva, the Pact for Renunciation of War in Paris, the London Naval Conference, the Conference of Ministers for a Moratorium on International Debts in London, the General Disarmament Conference in Geneva and the Eighth General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris.

Marriner’s final post was as U.S. consul General in Beirut, Syria (now Beirut, Lebanon). He was murdered on October 12, 1937, by an Armenian-born U.S. citizen over a perceived insult.

John Jack O’Keefe was born on August 21, 1895, in Jerome, Arizona, to Irish immigrant parents. Following military service in World War One, he graduated from the University of Arizona and worked for the U.S. Customs Service in Arizona through the 1920s. He first married Ella Johnson in 1926; they had two children, Patsy and John, before Ella died in 1929. He remarried to Eleanor Claasen in 1937.

O’Keefe joined the Department of State in 1931. He served in Nogales, Mexico (1931-1937), Agua Prieta, Mexico (1935-1937), and as Vice Consul in charge of the U.S. Consulate in Buenaventura, Colombia, from 1937 until his death. O’Keefe became very ill in Buenaventura and was medically evacuated by seaplane to Panama City. He died a few hours after arrival of malignant malaria in a hospital in Panama City on July 10, 1938, at the age of 42. His remains were accompanied by his wife, Eleanor, by ship through New Orleans. He is buried at the City of Nogales Cemetery in Nogales, Arizona.

[Sources: “Final Tribute Paid to John O’Keefe,” Nogales International, Nogales, Arizona, July 20, 1938, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “John Jack O’Keefe,’ City of Nogales Cemetery, Nogales, Arizona, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 111700689; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Henry William Antheil, Jr. was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1912. He served as a skilled cipher clerk in the U.S. Legation in Helsinki, Finland and worked for Ambassador William Christian Bullitt in Germany and Moscow. He was killed on June 14, 1940 – the day the Soviet blockade of Estonia began.

Antheil was a passenger aboard the Finnish airplane Kaleva when Soviet bombers shot it down over the Gulf of Finland. He was carrying several diplomatic pouches and codes at the time of his death, some of which may have included vital information regarding the Soviet Union’s plans in the Baltic region.

Louis Albert Sussdorff, Jr., was. Born in Elmhurst, New York, on January 7, 1888. He earned a law degree from Harvard University and entered the diplomatic service in 1914. In 1919, he married Flores Howard, a native of New Orleans, and they had two daughters, Laura and Mary Elizabeth.

After serving in posts including Paris, Rio de Janeiro, The Hague, Tokyo, Bucharest, and Brussels, he arrived as U.S. Consul General in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1937 and remained after Germany occupied Belgium in May 1940. Returning to Belgium from a consular conference in Cologne, he died in Bergheim, Germany on August 29, 1940, when the automobile he was driving was struck by a speeding train at a crossing where visibility was obstructed by parked German Army trucks. He was 52. Seriously injured in the same accident was the U.S. Consul in Brussels, Charles Clinton Broy, who died three years later of heart problems that may have been aggravated by the 1940 crash. Sussdorff is buried at Saint James Episcopal Church Cemetery in Elmhurst, New York.

[Sources: Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, September 3, 1940, Page 9, online at Newspapers.com; “Louis Sussdorff, Jr.,” Saint James Episcopal Church Cemetery, Elmhurst, New York Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 80727679; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records.]

John Miller Slaughter was born in Goshen, Indiana, on April 10, 1904, and moved to South Bend, Indiana with his parents as a child. He graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and married Mary Jane Baker on February 22, 1942, in South Bend, Indiana, shortly before the couple departed for their first post in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In Guayaquil, Slaughter served as vice consul and both he and his wife were among the 115 victims of a devastating earthquake on May 13, 1942. Slaughter was 38 and his wife was 27 years old. They are buried in Riverview Cemetery in South Bend, Indiana.

[Sources: “Simple Home Wedding United Prominent Couple,” The South Bend Tribune, February 23, 1942, Page 6, online at Newspapers.com; “John M. Slaughter Made U.S. Vice Consul in Ecuador,” The South Bend Tribune, South Bend, Indiana, March 8, 1942, Page 27, online at Newspapers.com; “John Miller Slaughter,” Riverview Cemetery, South Bend, Indiana, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 140535048; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records.]

Felix Russell “Russ” Engdahl was born July 28, 1907, in Spokane, Washington, to Swedish immigrants Knut and Anna Engdahl. He joined the Foreign Service in 1930 and served as U.S. vice consul to Port-au-Prince, Calcutta, and Shanghai. In Shanghai in 1937, he met and married Elizabeth “Lee” Cary Lockhart, daughter of an American economic adviser to the Chinese government. A few months later, Lee Engdahl relocated first to Manila and then to the United States as Japanese forces invaded China.

Engdahl journeyed from Shanghai to Hong Kong on courier duty before its fall to the Japanese in December 1941. He was subsequently captured and taken to the Stanley Internment Camp, where he died on May 14, 1942, after falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a skull fracture at the age of 34. His death occurred only a few months before all the Americans in the camp were repatriated. He is buried at Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong.

Following the war, his wife, Lee Engdahl, joined the Foreign Service as a consular officer and returned to Shanghai for her first assignment, where her sister’s family were interned under very difficult circumstances for the duration of the war. Lee served a long career with the Department, retiring from the Visa Office in 1969.

[Sources: “Spokane Man Wed in China,” The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, March 7, 1937, Page 31, online at Newspapers.com; Henderson, Lindsay, “A Labor of Love: Rediscovering State’s Lost History,” Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2022; “Felix Russell Engdahl,” Stanley Military Cemetery, Stanley, Hong Kong Island, China, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 42839102; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian Records.]

Frederick Walter Eyssell was born November 28, 1917, in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany, and attended the Turner Diplomatic School in Washington, D.C. before he passed the Foreign Service exam and was assigned as a Vice Consul in Cartagena, Colombia. Eyssel arrived in Cartagena as a first-tour officer on February 19, 1942, and died there from typhoid fever just three months later, on May 18, 1942, at the age of 24. He is buried in Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri.

[Sources: The Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri), 1 Jun 1942, Page 13, online at Newspapers.com; Columbia Missourian (Columbia, Missouri) 25 May 1942, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Frederick Walter Eyssell,” Mount Washington Cemetery, Independence, Missouri, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 92597358; Ancestry,com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Homer Castle White was born in Pekin, Indiana on January 10, 1906, and later moved to New Albany, Indiana. He married Lena Mae Kahl, and they had four children. White was a postal clerk before the outbreak of World War II, when he became a captain in the U.S. Army Courier Service. Discharged from the Army in 1944, he joined the State Department’s Diplomatic Courier Service in January 1945.

White died on December 4, 1945, in an airplane crash while accompanying a State Department classified diplomatic pouch shipment. The U.S. Army aircraft he was traveling in went missing after take-off between Liberia en route to Ghana. The airplane was never found, but the Army accident report speculates that it crashed in Nigeria. All passengers were declared dead a year after the crash. He died at age 39.

[Sources: “Kin Ask Full Hunt for 17 Lost on Flight,” Buffalo Courier Express, Buffalo, New York, February 19, 1946, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; https://www.state.gov/homer-white/; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Carlin Alexander Treat was born February 11, 1920, and raised in San Andreas, California. Treat graduated from the University of Santa Clara and received a Master’s degree from Northwestern University in 1942. He was stationed in Alaska during World War II, where he served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve; he also worked as a radio script writer for the Office of War information in Washington, D.C..

Treat joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to be a Vice Consul in Casablanca, Morocco, for his first assignment. He died in plane crash in Morocco on his way to post on October 10, 1946. His wife and the daughter of U.S. Consul Howard Elting were on the same flight. Treat was survived by his wife, Marjorie, and a 4 month old son, John. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, October 12, 1946, Page 16, online at Newspapers.com; Stockton Evening and Sunday Records, Stockton, California, November 29, 1944, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; “Carlin Alexander Treat,” Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 49328083; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

George C. Atcheson, Jr. was born on October 20, 1896, in Denver, Colorado, and graduated from the University of California. He worked briefly in journalism before becoming an interpreter at the U.S. Legation in Peking (Beijing), China, also serving in Changsha, Tientsin (Tianjin), Foochow (Fuzhou), and Nanking (Nanjing) before he became the Charge d’Affaires in Chungking (Chongqing) in 1943. He met and married fellow University of California graduate Mariquita de Laguna at a legation ball in China in 1922; they had one son. Atcheson was aboard the U.S.S. Panay when it was sunk in the Yangtze River in December 1937, for which he was awarded the Navy Expeditionary Medal. He attended the United Nations Organization conference in San Francisco in 1945 and became the U.S. representative to the Far Eastern Subcommittee of the U.S. War Crimes Commission. He also served as chairman of the Allied Council for Japan in April 1945.

Having initially been tapped to be the next U.S. Minister to Siam (Thailand) after World War II, Atcheson was assigned as an advisor to General Douglas McArthur’s staff in occupied Japan. He was traveling from Japan to Washington, D.C. to review U.S.-Japan peace treaty drafts when the U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 he was flying in crashed after running out of fuel 110 miles west of Oahu, Hawaii on August 17, 1947. He was 50 years old.

[Sources: Santa Barbara News-Press, Santa Barbara, California, August 18, 1947, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

George Dailey Henderson was born July 20, 1913, in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents. He graduated from Stanford University in 1939. He first married Ruth Neupert; they had one daughter before divorcing in 1943. His second marriage was to Romanian-born Agnes “Agi” Lengyel in 1945 in Washington, D.C.; they had one son, Bruce, born in 1947. Henderson served in Ciudad Juarez, Asuncion, Tirana, Mexicali, and Rome before his 1947 assignment as the U.S. Consul in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He, his wife, and son all died in the airplane crash of their Pan Am flight at Shannon Airport in Ireland on April 15, 1948, while enroute to Washington, D.C. for consultations. The family is buried at Drumcliff Cemetery in Ennis, Ireland.

[Sources: “George Dailey Henderson,” Drumcliff Cemetery, Ennis, Ireland, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 162506747; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Thomas Campbell Wasson was born in Essex, New Jersey in 1896. He served as U.S. vice consul to Melbourne, Australia and Puerto Cortes, Honduras; U.S. consul to Lagos, Nigeria; and U.S. consul general to Jerusalem.

On May 22, 1948, Wasson was shot while returning to the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem after a meeting of the UN Truce Commission at the French consulate. He died the following day, and the killer was never found.

Douglas Seymour Mackiernan was born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1913. His family moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts when he was still a child. Mackiernan became a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and during World War WII was a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a cryptographer and a meteorologist. He later served as a clandestine Central Intelligence Agency officer working under Department of State cover as a U.S. vice consul at Urumqi, China. In 1949, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered that the consulate be closed, Mackiernan was required to stay behind and continue his covert activities. When the threat of Communist troops arriving at Urumqi became immediate, the CIA ordered Mackiernan to travel through Tibet to India to escape. Mackiernan and a CIA contract agent along with three Russian allies began a 1000-mile camel and horseback journey across the Taklimakan desert.

On April 29, 1950, Tibetan border guards shot and killed Mackiernan and two other members of his party while he was crossing the Chinese border into Tibet. The U.S. Government had not requested permission for the group to enter Tibetan lands in time, and the guards had been issued orders to kill all foreigners who attempted to cross the frontier. Mackiernan was the first CIA officer killed in the line of duty. As the recently-created CIA did not yet have pension regulations, the Department of State offered his wife a survivor pension.

Note: When a CIA employe working under Department of State cover dies in qualifying circumstances, AFSA inscribes their name on the plaque. If the CIA later acknowledges their employment, AFSA updates the biographic information on this webpage.

[Source: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/douglas-s-mackiernan/]

Laurence Adolph Steinhardt was born in New York City in 1892. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during WWI, became a member of the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zion Commonwealth, practiced law and worked on the presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt later appointed Steinhardt U.S. minister to Sweden and U.S. ambassador to Peru, USSR, Turkey, Czechoslovakia and, finally, Canada.

While in Turkey, Steinhardt assisted in the rescue of Hungarian Jews from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp and helped prominent intellectuals settle in Turkey after fleeing war-torn Europe.

Steinhardt died on March 28, 1950, while on an airplane which crashed en route to Washington, D.C. The first U.S. Ambassador killed in office, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Steinhardt]

Richard True Dunning was born in Dallas, Texas, on June 13, 1921, and grew up in Glendale, California. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II. After discharge, he joined the State Department in October 1950 as a diplomatic courier. He had only been at his assignment based in Paris for a month when he died on June 22, 1951, in an airplane crash in Sanoyie, Liberia, while accompanying a State Department classified diplomatic pouch shipment between Paris and Capetown. He was on Pan American Airways flight 151, which crashed into a mountain in unknown circumstances 45 miles short of its next destination. He died at age 29. Due to the nature of the crash, all remains were buried near the crash site. Dunning was survived by his parents and one sister.

[Sources: “U.S. Diplomatic Courier was on Cape Town Trip,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 23, 1951, Page 2, available at Newspapers.com; https://www.state.gov/richard-dunning/; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Robert Lee Mikels was born in Cerro Gordo, Illinois, on January 31, 1919. After serving in World War II, he joined the Foreign Service in July 1951 as an accounting clerk in Singapore before transferring in August 1951 to serve as an accounting clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Pusan, South Korea. On November 26, 1951, he died while trying to alert his colleagues of a fire caused by a heater. The fire destroyed the embassy building and Mikels twice refused opportunities to save himself in order to save colleagues in the building. He was posthumously awarded the Department of State’s Superior Service Award. He died at the age of 32 and is buried at Cerro Gordo Cemetery in Cerro Gordo, Illinois. He was survived by his parents and two brothers.

[Sources: “Robert Mikels Rites to be Tomorrow,” Herald and Review, Decatur, Illinois, December 19, 1951, Page 8, available at Newspapers.com; “Robert Lee Mikels,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 91805933; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Willard Merrill Fisher, Jr., was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 23, 1926, and served in the U.S. Navy in World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the University of Delaware, graduating in 1951. He joined the Foreign Service in March 1952 as a diplomatic courier. He died on March 29, 1953, in an airplane crash in Mkwaja, Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania), while accompanying a State Department classified diplomatic pouch shipment. He was on a Central African Airways plane that broke apart in storms between Blantyre, in present-day Malawi, and Tanganyika, in present-day Tanzania. Fisher was 27 years old at the time of his death and is buried at the Anglican Cemetery in Tanga, Tanzania. He was survived by his parents.

[Sources: “Memorial Held for Plane Victim,” The Morning News, Wilmington, Delaware, April 27, 1953, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; https://www.state.gov/willard-fisher-jr/; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

David MacDougall LeBreton, Jr., was born on January 25, 1913, in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Princeton University, LeBreton had also studied at the University of Virginia Law School and the French Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. LeBreton joined the State Department in 1941 as a clerk in Monterrey and served in Cairo and Alexandria in addition to Warsaw and posts in Europe. He married Adele Harmon Welles in Edgartown, Virginia in 1950.

While serving as U.S. Consul in Tunis, Tunisia, LeBreton drowned on August 28, 1953, at La Marsa, about six miles north of Tunis. He successfully saved the lives of the two children of Morris Nelson Hughes, who had arrived earlier in the day to take over as Consul General in Tunis, but suffered a heart attack after being swept out to sea during the rescue. LeBreton was 40 years old at the time of his death. He is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland, and was survived by his wife and his parents.

[Sources: “Tunis Consul, D.C. Native, Drowns Saving 2 Children,” Times Herald, Wahington, D.C., August 30, 1953, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Mrs. Welles Will Be Wed This Month,” The Daily News Leader, Staunton, Virginia, August 8, 1950, Page 3; online at Newspapers.com; “David MacDougall LeBreton, Jr.,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 74229327; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Everette Dixie Reese was born in Houston, Texas on October 25, 1923. He attended the University of Houston and worked for the Houston Post before completing his education in Paris at the Sorbonne. Reese had served in Vietnam for four years as director of the USAID photo service before his death on April 29, 1955, when his plane was shot down near Saigon. Reese was 31 years old and was buried at Forest Park Cemetery in Houston, Texas. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy E. Reese, who served as a United States Public Health Service nurse for three years in Vietnam and a one year old son, Alan, in addition to his mother, a sister, and a brother. Many of his photos are preserved in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York.

Note: His inscription on the AFSA memorial plaque lists his first name as “Everett” but official records found later say “Everette.”

[Sources: “Texan Who Took Photos of Persecuted Is Killed,” The Tablet, Brooklyn, New York, May 28, 1955, Page 21, online at Newspapers.com; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everette_Dixie_Reese; “Everette Dixie Reese,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 20978797; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Pierce Boteler was born May 20, 1930, in Washington, D.C. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951. Serving under diplomatic cover as a U.S. vice consul at Nicosia, Cyprus, he died on June 16, 1956, in the bombing of a restaurant by the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA). Five other Americans were injured in the attack. Boteler was 26 years old and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his father, stepmother, a brother, and a sister.

Note: When a CIA employee working under Department of State cover dies in qualifying circumstances, AFSA inscribes their name on the plaque. If the CIA later acknowledges their employment, AFSA updates the biographic information on this webpage.

[Sources: “Cyprus Café Bombs Hurt L.A. Man,” The Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1956, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/william-pierce-boteler/; “William Pierce Boteler,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 36692486; Ancestry.com records.]

Livingston Lord Satterthwaite was born March 12, 1909, in Montgomery, Pennsylvania and lived in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Yale in 1931, joining the Foreign Service after graduation. He served a long career in Mexico City, San Jose, London, Damascus, Guadalajara, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Baghdad, Paris, and Berlin before becoming deputy chief of mission in Copenhagen, Denmark. Satterthwaite married twice, in 1933 to Adelaide Bristol with whom he had a son, and after a divorce, to Beatrice Bryant Charlton in 1955.

On August 29, 1959, while in Greenland on official business, Satterthwaite and six others died in a helicopter crash after returning an Inuit woman to her village following surgery at the Thule Air Base. The crash occurred minutes before the crew would have landed back at Thule, Greenland. Satterthwaite was 50 years old. He is buried at Hatboro Cemetery in Hatboro, Pennsylvania.

[Sources: “U.S. Diplomat Among 7 Killed in Copter Crash,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 28, 1959, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Livingston Lord Satterthwaite,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 22132753; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

John Francis O’Grady was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on April 5, 1920. He married Elsie Shaw; they had two children, Brian and Brenda. After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, O’Grady joined the State Department, serving in New Delhi, Damascus, Athens, and Washington. While serving as U.S. consul in Brisbane, Australia, he died in a plane crash on June 10, 1960, off the coast of Queensland. O’Grady was on an official tour of the consular district at the time. O’Grady is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: “Plane Hits Sea in Fog Off Coast,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas, June 11, 1960, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “John Francis O’Grady,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 49346301; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Dolph Brabham Owens was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 29, 1927, and lived in Tuscaloosa. He married Margaret Stallworth; they had two daughters, Donna and Krista. Owens served in the U.S. Army Special Forces before becoming a USAID public safety advisor at the American Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. On November 5, 1960, Owens and his Vietnamese driver were killed in an early morning Viet Cong machine-gun ambush. His family was enroute to Vietnam to join him when they were notified of his death at the age of 33. He is buried at Memory Hill Gardens in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

[Sources: The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Indiana, November 7, 1960, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; “Dolph Brabham Owens,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 159080272; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Robert Allen McKinnon was born on June 16, 1924, in Winchester, Massachusetts. He lived in Montreal, Canada, for about 15 years and graduated from high school there before he graduated from Yale University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He joined the State Department in 1948, serving in Halifax, Dar Es Salaam, Brussels, and Ouagadougou. He married Lorraine Miller in 1945 and they had three daughters, Diane, Barbara, and Mary.

For eight months prior to his death, McKinnon served as consul and the first charge d’affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He fell ill with a kidney infection caused by a tropical disease and was medevacked to Frankfurt, Germany, where he died in the U.S. Army hospital (now the U.S. Consulate General building) on September 8, 1961. McKinnon was 37 years old. He is buried in Westminster West Cemetery in Westminster, Vermont.

[Sources: “R.A. McKinnon, Upper Volta Envoy, Dies,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, September 9, 1961, Page 18, online at Newspapers.com; Foreign Service Journal, June 1963, Page 4; “Robert Allen McKinon,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 238643126; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

William Dale Fisher was born November 19, 1919, in Oak Park, Illinois. He married Sarah Guiou in 1942 and they had three children. Fisher served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy before joining the State Department and serving in France, the Netherlands, Austria, San Marino, and Czechoslovakia before becoming an economic officer in Ethiopia. On September 15, 1961, he died in a plane crash during a charter survey flight with staff of the American Coronado Petroleum Corporation. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: “Air Crash Victim Has Omaha Kin,” Evening World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, September 7, 1961, Page 36, online at Newspapers.com; “Lt. William Dale Fisher,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 8771710; Ancestry.com records, Office of the Historian records.]

Oscar Curtis Holder was born August 7, 1911, in Mississippi. He obtained degrees from Harvard and Sanford. He married Jane Cooper and they had two children, William and Mary. He joined the Foreign Service in 1941, serving in Port Said, Suez, Vladivostok, Lisbon, Moscow, Salzburg, Cairo, and Frankfurt. He was serving as a program inspector with USAID in Washington, D.C., at the time of his death. Holder died along with his colleague, Sidney Jacques, in the crash of a Royal Nepal airlines plane in the Himalayas on August 1, 1962. Nepal’s ambassador to India was also killed in the crash. He was 50 years old. Holder is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

[Sources: “Nepal Reports Finding Plane,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., August 13, 1962, Page 25, online at Newspapers.com; “Oscar Curtis Holder,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 200537007; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Sidney Bennett Jacques was born January 27, 1911, in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Yale and served in the Army. He married Jean McAllister; they had one daughter, Gail. Jacques joined the Foreign Service and served in Paris, Athens, and the Naval War College. He was assigned to Washington in 1960 as a program inspector with USAID. Jacques died along with his colleague, Oscar Holder, in the crash of a Royal Nepal airlines plane in the Himalayas on August 1, 1962. Nepal’s ambassador to India was also killed in the crash. Jacques is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was 51 years old.

[Sources: “Nepal Reports Finding Plane,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., August 13, 1962, Page 25, online at Newspapers.com; “Jacques, Sidney,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., August 25, 1962, Page 6, online at Newspapers.com; “Sidney Bennett Jacques” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 6631347; Ancestry.com records; Office of the Historian records.]

Nicole Audrey Marie Boucher was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 27, 1935. She worked as a secretary at the Harvard Medical School prior to joining the Foreign Service Staff Corps in 1960 as a secretary. Boucher was returning to the United States after completing her first assignment at U.S. Embassy Yaoundé when the Air Afrique airliner on which she was returning to the United States crashed into Mount Cameroon, near Douala, Cameroon, shortly after takeoff on May 10, 1963. She was 28. Diplomatic Courier Joseph Capozzi was on the same flight and was initially the sole survivor, but died in the hospital six days later. Boucher was survived by her parents and two brothers. There is a cenotaph in her memory at Precious Blood Cemetery in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

[Source: “Nicole Audrey Boucher,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 63351312; Department of State Newsletter, May 1963, inside front cover; Ancestry.com records]

Joseph Patrick Capozzi was born on March 3, 1934, in New York City. Raised in Elmira, New York, Mr. Capozzi joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Korean War. After his discharge in 1954, he worked several jobs and earned a degree from Harpur College in New York. He joined the Foreign Service in June 1962 as a diplomatic courier.

He died on May 10, 1963, from injuries sustained during the crash of the Air Afrique airliner on which he was returning to the United States with a classified pouch shipment. The flight crashed into Mount Cameroon, near Douala, Cameroon, shortly after takeoff. He was initially the only survivor among the 55 passengers on board, but died six days later in the hospital in Douala. U.S. Embassy Yaoundé secretary Nicole Boucher also died in the crash. Capozzi was survived by his parents, a brother, and three sisters. He was 29 years old. Capozzi is buried at Saint Peter and Paul’s Cemetery in Elmira, New York.

[Sources: “U.S. Courier Survived Crash of Airliner in Cameroon, Africa,” Transcript-Telegram, Holyoke, Massachusetts, May 6, 1963, Page 9, online at Newspapers.com; https://www.state.gov/joseph-capozzi/; “Sgt Joseph Patrick Capozzi,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 164849930; Ancestry.com records.]

Joseph Robert “Bob” Rupley was born in Spokane, Washington on March 4, 1940. He attended the University of California – Riverside and studied in Germany before he earned an economics degree from University of California – Berkley. Rupley served for two years with the U.S. Peace Corps in Peru before becoming associate director of the Peace Corps in Venezuela. On February 19, 1965, while returning from the airport after picking up a Peace Corps volunteer, he was mistaken for a rebel, shot and killed by Caracas Police while driving through an area with ongoing unrest. David Glover, one of three Peace Corps volunteers who was in Rupley’s vehicle at the time, was also shot but survived. Rupley was 24 years old. He was survived by his parents. His remains are interred at the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium and Mausoleum in Oakland, California.

[Sources: “Peace Corpsman Shot to Death,” The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 21, Feb 1965, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “Joseph Robert Rupley,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 232062727 and 85082779; Ancestry.com records.]

Henry Holcomb Ford was born January 22, 1913, in Johnson City, Tennessee. He married Anna Deitz in 1941, and they had one daughter, Frances. A former U.S. Air Force officer, he served as Consul General in Casablanca and as comptroller of President Truman’s Point Four technical assistance program. In 1950, he was director of the Department of State’s budget division and later served as executive director of the Bureau of Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs.

While serving as U.S. Consul General in Frankfurt, West Germany (now Germany), Ford died in an automobile accident on the autobahn near Staffel (located between Frankfurt and Bonn) on March 9, 1965. His government chauffeur and his wife were both seriously injured in the crash, which took place while traveled to participate in a consular meeting in Bad Godesberg. He was survived by his wife, daughter, and mother, all of whom were living with him in Frankfurt at the time of the accident. Ford was 52 years old. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: “U.S. Consul General Crash Victim,” The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 10, 1965, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; “Henry H. Ford,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 49183308; Ancestry.com records.]

Joseph William Grainger was born on May 1, 1925, in Hartford, Connecticut. An Air Force veteran and graduate of Yale University, he was resident in Sumter, South Carolina and served as a USAID officer in Vietnam. Captured by the Viet Cong on August 8, 1964, along with a Filipino assistant and the Vietnamese manager of a sugar cane experiment station, he attempted escape and spent seven days making his way across a swamp, but was recaptured and killed after he refused to return to the prison camp on January 12, 1965. The two individuals who shot him were executed themselves, as the Viet Cong was no longer able to collect USAID reward money in exchange for Grainger’s safe return. His Filipino assistant was released on December 10, 1964, and the Vietnamese sugar plantation director was also later freed. Grainger’s wife, Elizabeth, and four children were evacuated with other dependents from Vietnam to Thailand in February 1965 before returning to the United States.

Grainger was the first civilian U.S. official captured in South Vietnam. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the Department of State’s highest award.

[Sources: “Search for Aide Seized by Reds Pushed,” The Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1964, Page 7, online at Newspapers.com; The Kansas City Star, Kansas City, Missouri, April 13, 1965, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Joseph William Grainger,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 128414448; Ancestry.com records.]

Barbara Annette Robbins was born in South Dakota in 1943. Raised primarily in Colorado, she attended Colorado State University and joined the Central Intelligence Agency soon after graduation.

Robbins served as a CIA officer under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam. On March 30, 1965, she was killed when insurgents detonated a car bomb outside of the Embassy.

Robbins was the first American woman to die in the Vietnam conflict, the first female CIA employee to be killed in action and, at age 21, the youngest CIA employee to ever die in action.

Note: When a CIA employee working under Department of State cover dies in qualifying circumstances, AFSA inscribes their name on the plaque. If the CIA later acknowledges their employment, AFSA updates the biographic information on this webpage.

[Source: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/barbara-a-robbins/]

Jack Junior Wells was born in New Boston, Ohio on June 23, 1926, and grew up in Minford, Ohio. Wells married Betty McGraw; they had one daughter and two sons. He enlisted in the U.S. Army soon after graduating high school, served in two World War II campaigns in the South Pacific, worked as a military advisor in South Vietnam, and retired from the Army as a major. He earned the Bronze Star and commendation medal for performance of duty.

Wells joined USAID after retiring from the Army and was assigned to South Vietnam. He died when his plane crashed under small arms fire on September 27, 1965, on approach to land at Bau Trai airstrip. He was 39 years old. He is buried at Marietta National Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia.

[Sources: “Jack Junior Wells,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 3958452; Ancestry.com records.]

Norman Lee Clowers was born in Tacoma, Washington on September 11, 1915. He married Harriette Monroe, and they had a daughter and a son. Prior to joining USAID as a public safety advisor in South Vietnam, Clowers was a police officer in Tacoma, Washington, and chief of police training in Laramie, Wyoming. He also ran a successful private investigation business.

Clowers was killed by the Viet Cong during an ambush after delivering building materials to a small village near his post on July 25, 1966. He was 50 years old. He is buried at Mountain View Memorial Park in Tacoma, Washington.

[Sources: “AID Volunteers Carry on Humane ‘War’ in Viet Nam,” The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, August 31, 1966, Page 10, online at Newspapers.com; “Norman L. Clowers,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 114192872; Ancestry.com records.]

William Ward Smith III was born in Searcy, Arkansas, on January 15, 1934. Joining the Air Force, he rose through the ranks to the grade of captain. On July 23, 1966, he was serving with the 505th Tactical Air Continuity Group as a passenger in a Cessna Bird Dog Observation Aircraft on a forward air control mission controlling a flight of F-4B aircraft when, at the completion of the airstrike, his O-1E collided with a Marine helicopter at 2500 feet. He was 32 years old. His remains were not recovered, and there is a cenotaph in his memory at Honolulu Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Note: AFSA added him to the Memorial Plaque in 1972 along with 22 other deaths dating back to 1960. The inscribed name is William D. Smith III having died in 1966 in Vietnam. USAID separately inscribed the same name on its Memorial Wall. However, a records search in 2025 found only Air Force Captain William W. Smith III dying in Vietnam in 1966 as described above, with no mention of him being detailed to USAID.

[Sources: https://www.virtualwall.org/ds/SmithWW01a.htm; “Capt. William Ward Smith,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 137016430 and 228385657; Foreign Service Journal, May 1971, page 57; Foreign Service Journal, November 1972, page 38; Ancestry.com records.]

Don Myron Sjostrom was born in Bothell, Washington on April 20, 1940. He earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Washington and served in Thailand with the Peace Corps. Serving in Laos as a U.S. Agency for International Development operations officer, he died of a head injury when a mortar shell exploded on January 8, 1967, during a conflict in the town of Nakhang, where he had gone to help refugees fleeing from Communist forces. Sjostrom was survived by his parents, two sisters, and a brother. He was 26 years old. He is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Everett, Washington.

[Sources: “Shell Burst Takes Life of Volunteer,” The Daily Herald, Everett, Washington, January 7, 1967, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Don M. Sjostrom,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 16832266; Ancestry.com records.]

Francis John “Bud” Savage was born in Olean, New York, on June 26, 1925. He served in the U.S. Navy during the tail end of WWII and joined the State Department in 1950, serving in Iceland, Greece, France, Trinidad, and Libya.

In 1960, Savage joined the U.S. Agency for International Development where he worked as a general services officer in Mogadishu, Somalia, and a provincial representative in Vietnam. He died on March 17, 1967, from complications of malaria and liver surgery to repair an abscess that resulted from severe wounds suffered two years earlier during a bombing at the My Cahn Café, a floating restaurant in Saigon. He was 42. Savage was survived by his wife, Doreen, two children, and his mother. Savage was posthumously awarded the Secretary’s Award by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He is buried at Saint Bonaventure Cemetery in Allegany, New York.

[Sources: “Posthumous Award Given to Family of Olean Man,” The Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 1967, Page 47, online at Newspapers.com; “Francis J. ‘Bud’ Savage,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 19505681; Ancestry.com records.]

Gustav Crane Hertz was born in Queens, New York on May 10, 1918. He married Nellie “Solange” Strong; they had five children. He was a graduate of American University in Washington, D.C.

Hertz served with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Vietnam as the chief of public service administration. On February 2, 1965, he was captured by the Viet Cong northeast of Saigon while driving a motorcycle on a highway. He spent the next two and a half years as a prisoner of war, eventually succumbing to malaria, on or about September 24, 1967. He was 49 years old. Hertz is buried at Saint John the Apostle Catholic Cemetery in Leesburg, Virginia.

[Sources: “Viet Reds Threaten Kidnaped Yankee,” Independent, Long Beach, California, April 8, 1965, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; “Seek Body of Kidnaped Aide,” The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri, November 8, 1967, Page 15, online at Newspapers.com; “Gustav Crane Hertz,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 35195613; Ancestry.com records.]

John Roger McLean was born in Tucson, Arizona on September 25, 1934, and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He spoke fluent Lao and served as a public affairs officer with the U.S. Information Service in Laos. He died in the crash of a chartered airplane on April 6, 1967, along with four other Americans. He was 32 years old. McLean was survived by a sister, three nieces, a nephew, and his uncle, who worked for the U.S. Information Agency. McLean is buried at Holy Sepulcher Catholic Cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.

[Sources: “Brutal Laotian War Continued Unabated,” The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, February 19, 1967, Page 53, online at Newspapers.com; “2 From Texas Among Victims in Laos Crash,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas, May 6, 1967, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “John Roger McLean,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 139983874; Ancestry.com records.]

Robert Kenneth Franzblau was born April 8, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of the University of Florida, former high school teacher, and an Army veteran who had served a tour in Vietnam, he joined the U.S. Agency for International Development to return to the country, where he taught and worked with children. He died on June 7, 1967, of a gunshot sustained during a Viet Cong attack on the house in which he was staying in the town of Bien Son, 15 miles east of Saigon. Franzblau was 26 years old. He was survived by his parents and a sister, and is buried at Lakeside Memorial Park in Doral, Florida.

[Sources: “Ex-Miami Teacher Dies,” The Miami News, Miami, Florida, June 8, 1967, Page 23, online at Newspapers.com; “Robert Kenneth Franzblau,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 215780736; Ancestry.com records.]

Dwight Hall Owen, Jr., was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 9, 1946. He worked as a freelance newspaper correspondent before joining the U.S. Agency for International Development at the age of 19 while a student at Stanford University. Owen had first served with USAID in Vietnam while on sabbatical from his studies in 1965 and returned to Vietnam for a second time in 1967 after turning down an opportunity to enroll at Stanford’s campus in Germany. Owen died of a gunshot wound near Chu Lai, Vietnam on August 30, 1967, while saving other Vietnamese and American officials from an ambush. He was 21 years old. Owen was survived by his parents and two brothers. He is buried at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.

[Sources: “Stanford Student Will Never Return,” The Napa Valley Register, Napa, California, October 26, 1967, Page 6, online at Newspapers.com; “Dwight Hall Owen, Jr.,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID 66149673; Ancestry.com records.]

Donald Vern Freeman was born on August 8, 1935, in Oklahoma. He rose to the rank of captain in the U.S. Army and was killed October 3, 1967, in Vietnam while serving the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was 32 years old. He was survived by his wife, Rose Baxter Freeman, four children, and his mother and sister.

[Sources: Great Bend Tribune, Great Bend, Kansas, October 17, 1967, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; https://www.virtualwall.org/df/FreemanDV01a.htm; “Donald V. Freeman,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 668814; Ancestry.com records.]

Carroll H. Pender was born in Jefferson County, Indiana, on December 30, 1921. He served with the Canadian Army in Europe during World War II – a result of being too young to join the U.S. Army – and in late 1944, briefly became a POW, imprisoned at Stalag IV-B at Mühlberg, near Dresden, Germany. After returning to the United States, Pender entered the U.S. Army. He fought in the Korean War and served in the Vietnam War as a senior enlisted advisor to the South Vietnamese 25th Infantry Division. Pender retired a command sergeant major in 1966.

Pender joined the U.S. Agency for International Development immediately after retirement as a hospital administration specialist and member of an American-Swiss surgical team. He was killed by a landmine on December 27, 1967, after rushing to the scene of a nearby attack to aid the wounded. He was 45 years old. Pender was survived by his wife, two sons, his mother, and six siblings.

[Sources: “Dearborn Kin, War Casualty, In Last Rites,” The Lawrenceburg Press, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, January 11, 1968, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records.]

Thomas Weldon Ragsdale was born in Shelina, Missouri, on June 25, 1935. He studied at the University of Missouri at Columbia, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1959, after which he worked as a grain marketing specialist in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Ragsdale worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, serving as a civilian agricultural specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Vietnam. He was captured by Communist forces in Hue during the Tet Offensive in February 1968 and died during imprisonment, the exact date unknown. His remains were recovered in July 1969 about 30 miles southwest of Hue.

[Sources: “40 Americans Are Missing in S. Vietnam,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, August 6, 1969, Page 43, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records.]

Robert Wilson Brown, Jr., was born in Easton, Maryland, on September 4, 1941. A U.S. Marine Corps captain, he served with the U.S. Agency for International Development and died of a gunshot wound on February 26, 1968, while on a resupply and inspection mission at the Truong Son hamlet in Darla Province. He was 26 years old. Brown was survived by his wife, Mary Brown, three sons, and his parents and a brother. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

[Sources: “Cpt. Robert Wilson Brown Jr.,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 228462973 and 154026418; https://www.virtualwall.org/db/BrownRW02a.htm; Ancestry.com records.]

Frederick John Abramson was born in Bellevue, Washington on October 15, 1941. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Abramson was the youngest American deputy province advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Mekong Delta and died along with four American soldiers when the Viet Cong attacked a military convoy in the Vinh Long Province on January 6, 1968. He was survived by his parents and two brothers.

[Sources: “VC Ambush Kills Adviser,” The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, January 6, 1968, Page 4, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records.]

Kermit Joseph “Tom” Krause was born in Waterloo, Wisconsin, on September 8, 1919. A World War II Signal Corps veteran who also served in the Korean War, Krause served with the U.S. Agency for International Development as an assistant supply advisor and was killed by the Viet Cong at his residence in Hue, Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive on January 30, 1968. Krause was survived by his wife, Edith, three children, and one grandchild. He is buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

[Sources: “Army Eases Ruling to Permit Vet’s Burial in SF Cemetery,” The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California, February 19, 1968, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Kermit Joseph Krause,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 3597806; Ancestry.com records.]

John Thomas McCarthy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 31, 1909. He retired from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in 1959 after 21 years of service, joining the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1966 as a police liaison officer. On January 30, 1968, McCarthy was killed by sniper fire at his post in Nha Trang during the Tet Offensive. He was 58 years old. McCarthy was survived by his wife, Bernadette, a daughter, a stepson, and two sisters. He is buried at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

[Sources: “John T. McCarthy,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 136220907; Ancestry.com records.]

Robert Walker Hubbard was born in Auburn, Alabama on November 26, 1940. He served as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, an advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Vietnam.

During a Viet Cong attack on the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive, Hubbard aided a small group of American civilians and soldiers by moving from shelter to shelter, foraging for food, tending to the wounded and returning enemy fire. Although he was shot and killed during this operation on February 4, 1968, he made possible the safe escape of his companions. Hubbard was 27 years old. He was survived by his parents. He is buried in Auburn Memorial Park Cemetery in Auburn, Alabama.

[Sources: Lau, Raymond R., “The 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the Seizure of Hue,” Studies in Intelligence (Vol. 61, No. 4; Extracts, December 2017); https://www.virtualwall.org/dh/HubbardRW01a.htm; “Capt. Robert Walker Hubbard,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 12619319; Ancestry.com records.]

Thomas Malcolm Gompertz was born in Alameda, California, on February 12, 1941. He graduated from Stanford University in 1962 and had served for three years with the U.S. Agency for International Development as assistant representative in Hue, Vietnam, when the Tet Offensive began. Gompertz was killed on February 7, 1968, just one week before the end of his tour and his scheduled return to California to attend graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. He was 26 years old and was survived by his parents, a sister, and grandparents.

[Sources: Lau, Raymond R., “The 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the Seizure of Hue,” Studies in Intelligence (Vol. 61, No. 4; Extracts, December 2017); “Red Offensive Claims Cousin of Modestan,” The Modesto Bee, Modesto, California, February 9, 1968, Page 2, online at Newspapers.com; “Thomas Gompertz,” The Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, February 28, 1968, Page 22, online at Newspapers.com; “Thomas Gomperts,” Contra Costa Times, Contra Costa, California, March 1, 1968, Page 5, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records.]

Robert Roy Little was born in New York on June 26, 1938. He served with the U.S. Agency for International Development at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and was killed on February 7, 1968, in Hue during the Tet Offensive. He was survived by his parents and two brothers. He was 29 years old.

[Sources: “Robert Roy Little,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 234782694; Ancestry.com records.]

Jeffrey S. Lundstedt was born in Centerport, New York, on May 23, 1942. He served with the Peace Corps in Ecuador and Puerto Rico after his graduation from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as a creative artist.

Lundstedt worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Hue, Vietnam, where he was assigned when the Tet Offensive broke out in January 1968. He was killed on February 7, 1968, in his residence at Hue by the Viet Cong. A posthumous exhibit of his artwork was displayed at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York, after his death and some of his works are still housed there.

[Sources: Lau, Raymond R., “The 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the Seizure of Hue,” Studies in Intelligence (Vol. 61, No. 4; Extracts, December 2017); Newsday (Suffolk Edition), Melville, New York, February 10, 1968, Page 11, online at Newspapers.com; “Work of Artist Killed in Vietnam on Exhibit,” Newsday (Suffolk Edition), Melville, New York, November 19, 1968, Page 77, online at Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com records.]

Stephen Harwood Miller was born in State College, Pennsylvania, on February 27, 1939. His family moved with some regularity in his childhood, as his father was a history professor who taught at private universities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.

Stephen Miller served with the U.S. Information Service in Vietnam at the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office. On February 7, 1968, he was bound and shot in a field behind a Catholic seminary by the Viet Cong in Hue during the Tet Offensive. Miller was survived by his wife, three children, as well as his parents and two siblings.

[Sources: “State Department Reports Deaths of Three U.S. Civilian Employees,” The Tribune, Scranton, Pennsylvania, February 20, 1968, Page 10, online at Newspapers.com; “Body of Ohio Man is Found in Hue Cemetery,” Gazette News-Current, Xenia, Ohio, February 19, 1968, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; Lau, Raymond R., “The 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the Seizure of Hue,” Studies in Intelligence (Vol. 61, No. 4; Extracts, December 2017); Ancestry.com records.]

Albert Alexander Farkas was born on March 31, 1913, in Conneaut, Ohio, and attended Franklin and Marshall College. He joined the Lancaster, Pennsylvania police department in 1937 before taking a leave of absence in 1943 to join the Navy. After World War II, Farkas returned to the Lancaster Police Department, where he eventually became Chief of Police.

He retired in 1966 and served as a U.S. Agency for International Development civilian advisor to the police department in Vinh Long Province, Vietnam. He was wounded by sniper fire on February 10, 1968, and died on February 15 from a blood clot at the age of 54. Farkas is buried in Conestoga Memorial Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was survived by his mother and a brother; however, his mother died of shock just a few days after learning of her son’s death.

[Sources: “Al Farkas Dies in Saigon,” Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, February 16, 1968, Page 1, online at Newspapers.com; “Albert A. Farkas,” Findagrave.com, Memorial ID: 187014945; Ancestry.com records.]

Hugh C. Lobit was born in Texas in 1933. He served with USAID. On February 9, 1968, he was shot and killed by a sniper while escorting a U.S. news correspondent.

Richard A. Schenk was born in Missouri in 1939. He served with USAID and died on March 2, 1968.

Michael Murphy was born in Cork City, Ireland in 1928. He served in WWII with the Royal Air Force Police before becoming a lieutenant in the Malayan Constabulary.

Murphy emigrated to the U.S. in 1954 and later joined the Alaska State Troopers. He served with USAID as a police advisor with the Office of Public Safety in Vietnam. On June 14, 1968, he was killed by a missile during a Viet Cong patrol ambush.

The Michael Murphy Memorial Scholarship for Alaskan college students pursuing a career in law or law enforcement was established in his honor.

John Gordon Mein was born in 1913 and lived in Maryland. He was appointed U.S. ambassador to Guatemala in 1965, when the national was suffering from a civil war.

On August 28, 1968, members of the Guatemalan Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) forced Mein out of his limousine one block from the U.S. Consulate in Guatemala City.

U.S. officials believe that FAR planned to kidnap the ambassador and demand the freedom of a recently arrested guerrilla leader in exchange for Mein’s safe release. When Mein tried to escape, however, the rebels shot him with a submachine gun. He was the first U.S. ambassador assassinated in office.

Corporal James Conrad Marshall was born in 1946. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1964 and trained at Parris Island before serving in supply administrations and operations. In 1966, he was accepted into the Marine Security Guard Program and posted to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

Marshall was shot and killed on January 31, 1968 while guarding the embassy from a Viet Cong attack. Marshall was the first U.S. Marine to be killed while defending an American embassy, and he was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism. The USMC Embassy Training Facility at Quantico, Virginia is named in his honor.

Steven Andrew Haukness was born in 1941. He served at the U.S. Consulate in DaNang as a communicator and was captured by the Viet Cong on February 1, 1968. He was found dead seven years later.

George B. Gaines was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1922. He served with USAID as a civilian logistics officer at Quang Ngai Province and died on February 23, 1969.

Joseph Brooks Smith was born in New York in 1942. He served as an assistant area development officer with USAID. On August 30, 1970, Smith was killed by a landmine explosion while visiting a new refugee resettlement center.

Major Robert P. Perry was born in 1935. He served as an assistant army attaché in Amman, Jordan. On June 10, 1970, Perry was murdered by a Palestinian gunman, who shot him through the front door of his house.

Dan A. Mitrione was born in Italy in 1920. He served as a police officer in Indiana before joining the FBI in 1959. One year later, he was assigned to the U.S. State Department's International Cooperation Administration to teach counterinsurgency techniques and provide weapons and training for police officers and military officials in South American nations.

Mitrione began his work in Brazil, spent a brief period in the Dominican Republic and, in 1969, moved to Uruguay under USAID to oversee the Office of Public Safety. On July 31, 1970, Mitrione was kidnapped by Tupamaros rebels, who interrogated him and demanded the freedom of 150 political prisoners. After the refusal of the Uruguayan government, Mitrione was found dead of a gunshot wound.

Doris Knittle was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Temple University's School of Nursing, she was part of the university hospital staff for eight years and later went overseas to work as a nurse in Algiers. In 1967, Knittle joined the Foreign Service and began working as supervisor of the dispensary at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. She was murdered on August 25, 1970 at age 35.

Howard V. Funk, Jr., was born in New York in 1929. He served as first secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and died on April 9, 1971.

Donald Leahy was the administrative assistant at the U.S. Embassy in Santa Isabel (now Malabo), Equatorial Guinea. The only other American at post was Principal Officer Alfred Erdos. On August 30, 1971, Erdos stabbed Leahy to death in what appears to have been a bout of temporary insanity. Erdos was returned to the U.S. where a court found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Charles W. Turberville, a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, was killed on September 26, 1971, while defending the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh.

Eugene F. Sullivan was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1924. He served in the U.S. Navy in WWII after attending the Navy College Training Program at Tufts University. The Navy later sent him to the University of Colorado Navy Chinese Language School after recognizing his linguistic talents.

Sullivan began work at the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. as a Chinese translator. He graduated from The George Washington University with a degree in chemical engineering in 1949 and later began working for the CIA and NSA in Seoul.

Sullivan returned to Seoul as a chemical engineer with the USAID predecessor agencies (OEC & USOM) before working in Taiwan and Manila as an industry officer, Thailand as a private development officer and Ethiopia as a private enterprise officer. He caught a rare form of malaria, black water fever, while at the latter post. He died of the disease in a hospital in Asmara, Eritrea on January 21, 1972.

Sullivan was fluent in 13 languages at the time of his death.

Joseph Fandino was born in New York City in 1932. He briefly attended Iona College before joining the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. Fandino later became one of the first Hispanic American Foreign Service officers. Abroad, he served in the Dominican Republic, Spain and Canada. Domestically, he worked with Cuban refugees and visiting dignitaries at the Miami Reception Center and served as Cuban desk officer at the Department of State.

In 1971, Fandino joined USAID’s civil operations and revolutionary development support program in Vietnam as an ethnic affairs officer. He died there on June 27, 1972.

Luther A. McLendon, Jr., was born in 1919. A captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, he served with USAID and died on December 1, 1972, while aboard a plane that exploded on the ground in Phu Yen Province in Vietnam.

Bruce O’Bailey was born in San Diego, California in 1929. He served as a USAID social welfare advisor and died on December 1, 1972, while en route to a refugee camp.

Rudolph Kaiser lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served as a USAID senior advisor in Go Cong Province and died in a Viet Cong ambush while accompanying South Vietnamese militia forces in the Mekong Delta.

John Paul Vann was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1924. He served in the Army Air Corps during WWII and later as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, working in Korea and Japan as a logistics officer and later leading the transportation of the 25th Infantry Division to Korea, where he and his unit guarded the Pusan Perimeter.

Vann later received an M.B.A. from Syracuse University and returned to the army as an advisor in South Vietnam, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery. He returned to Vietnam with USAID in 1965, becoming a deputy for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS). He helped to train and encourage Army of the Republic of Vietnam soldiers and later, as senior American advisor in the II Corps Military Region, became the first U.S. civilian to command U.S. regular troops in combat.

Vann died during a helicopter crash on June 9, 1972. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Cross (the only civilian so honored in Vietnam).

Rose Marie Orlich was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1936. She served as a staff officer at the U.S. Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua. On December 23, 1972, she died while trapped inside the embassy during an earthquake.

Cleo Allen Noel, Jr., was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1918, and grew up in Moberly, Missouri. He received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in history from the University of Missouri.

Noel briefly taught American history at the University of Missouri before joining the U.S. Navy in June of 1941. He served as a gunnery officer aboard merchant vessels throughout the Pacific Ocean and the Persian Gulf, retiring after WWII with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Noel later earned his Ph.D. from Harvard, married a Foreign Service employee and joined the Foreign Service himself. He served at consulates in Italy, Saudi Arabia, France and Lebanon and learned Arabic.

While serving as U.S. ambassador to Sudan, Noel and nine others were kidnapped by militants from the Black September faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum on March 1, 1973. He was shot by the terrorists one day later and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

George Curtis Moore was born in California in 1925. He served as ad interm charge d’affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.

Curtis and nine others were kidnapped by militants from the Black September faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum on March 1, 1973. He was shot by the terrorist one day later and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

John S. Patterson served as U.S. vice consul in Hermosillo, Mexico. He was kidnapped by terrorists on March 22, 1974 and later found dead.

Rodger Paul Davies was born in Berkley, California in 1921. A WWII veteran, he served as director of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. He was appointed U.S. ambassador to Cyprus in July of 1974.

Only six weeks after his appointment to the latter post, Davies was killed by a sniper during an anti-American demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia on August 19, 1974. The murdered was allegedly a gunman from EOKA-B, a Greek Cypriot paramilitary terrorist organization responsible for a coup d’état that took place one month before.

Richard Arthur Coulter was born in Oregon in 1945. He served at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and died on July 1, 1974.

Thomas Olmsted served as USAID chief of mission in Cambodia. He died on February 12, 1975.

John Patrick Egan served as a U.S. consular agent to Cordoba, Argentina. He was kidnapped by the Montoneros, a leftist terrorist group which demanded the release of four political prisoners in exchange for the diplomat’s safety. The prisoners were already dead, however, and the militants executed Egan on February 28, 1975. His body was found wrapped in the Montoneros flag.

Charles McMahon resided in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1953. He served as U.S. Marine corps corporal at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

McMahon was killed by a rocket attack on April 29, 1975 – only a few days after his arrival in Vietnam. He had been defending the defense attaché building on Tan Son Nhut Airbase. McMahon was one of the last two servicemen killed in action in the Vietnam War.

Lance Corporal Darwin L. Judge was born in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1956. An Eagle Scout, he served with the Marine Corps at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

Judge he was killed by a rocket attack on April 29, 1975. He had been defending the defense attaché building on Tan Son Nhut Airbase and was one of the last two servicemen killed in action in the Vietnam War.

Edward R. Cheney was born in 1927. He served as chief of the Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines. In September 1976, his plane crashed en route to inspect the Bicol River basin project in Naga City. He and seven others were found dead almost two weeks later.

Garnett A. Zimmerly was born in 1928 and lived in Hope, Arkansas. He served with the U.S. Navy in WWII and, later, as USAID mission director in the Philippines. In September 1976, his plane crashed en route to inspect the Bicol River basin project in Naga City. He and seven others were found dead almost two weeks later.

Francis Edward Meloy, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C. in 1917. He served with the U.S. Navy in WWII and as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Lebanon.

While at the latter post, he, the U.S. economic counselor Robert O. Waring and their driver Zuhair Mohammed Moghrabi were kidnapped by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine while on their way to meet the new President of Lebanon, Elias Sarkis. Their bodies were found later that day – June 16, 1976 – in west Beirut.

Robert Olaf Waring was born in Long Island City, New York, in 1919. He served in Rabat, Athens, London, Berlin, Vienna and Beirut as U.S. economic counselor.

While at the latter post, he, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Francis E. Meloy, Jr. and their driver were kidnapped by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine while on their way to meet the new President of Lebanon, Elias Sarkis. Their bodies were found later that day – June 16, 1976 – in west Beirut. Waring was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and honored on a plaque at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

Adolph Dubs was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1920. He studied at Beloit College, Georgetown University, Harvard University and Washington University at St. Louis before entering the Foreign Service. He served in Germany, Liberia, Canada, Yugoslavia and, as an expert on the Soviet Union, at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as charge d’affaires.

Dubs was named U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 1978, soon after a coup d’état which gave power to the Soviet-aligned Khalq faction. On February 14, 1979, Dubs was kidnapped by four armed militants posing as police and held captive in Room 117 in the Kabul hotel. The militants allegedly demanded the release of multiple political prisoners in exchange for the ambassador’s safety, although their true intentions were never explained.

Against the wishes of the U.S. government, which proposed peaceful negotiations, the Afghan police stormed the hotel room and began a violent firefight. Only one minute later, Dubs was found dead of a gunshot to the head. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Steven J. Crowley was born in 1959 and lived in Long Island, New York. A corporal, he served as a Marine security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.

On November 21, 1979, Pakistani students stormed the U.S. Embassy at Islamabad after hearing a false radio report claiming that the U.S. had bombed and burned Islam’s holy site at Mecca. Crowley was shot by a sniper while posted on the roof of the Embassy. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart and buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Bryan L. Ellis was born in 1950. He served as chief warrant officer at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. On November 21, 1979, Pakistani students stormed the U.S. Embassy at Islamabad after hearing a false radio report claiming that the U.S. had bombed and burned Islam’s holy site at Mecca. Ellis was burned during the riots and died in his apartment.

Charles Robert Ray was born in New York City in 1938 and joined the U.S. Army in 1960. A lieutenant colonel and decorated Vietnam Veteran, he served as an assistant army attaché in Paris. On January 18, 1982, George Ibrahim Abdallah of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction shot and killed Ray outside his apartment building. He was posthumously promoted to Colonel and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Richard Aitken served with USAID.

Philip Robert Hanson was born in Minnesota in 1946. He worked with the Peace Corps in Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco and served as general services officer in Ouagadougou, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). While on a plane to Lome, Togo, to begin his TDY, his plane crashed and killed all on board.

Robert Clayton Ames was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1934. A talented basketball player and graduate of La Salle University, he served in the U.S. Army and the CIA as Near East Chief. Ames was fluent in Arabic, served all throughout the Middle East and helped open a path to peaceful negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

On April 18, 1983, Ames became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Thomas R. Blacka was born in Connellsville, Pennsylvania in 1923. He graduated from the Universities of Miami and Denver and served with the U.S. military in England during WWII. He later joined USAID, with which he traveled worldwide until his retirement.

Blacka returned to USAID in 1982 to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Phyliss N. Faraci was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania in 1939. She graduated from Douglas Business School and served with the CIA in Vietnam and Kuwait.

Faraci’s final post was as an administrative assistant and an undercover CIA agent at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, she became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Terry L. Gilden was born in Chandler, Arizona in 1957. A sergeant first class in the U.S. Army, he became a member of the Special Forces Unit and served as a bodyguard to the U.S. ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Kenneth E. Haas was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1944. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Syracuse University and served with the CIA in Bangladesh, Iran and Oman.

Hass’ final post was as CIA station chief at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Deborah M. Hixon was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1952. She graduated from the University of Colorado - Boulder and served as a foreign affairs analyst and undercover CIA agent at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, she became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Frank J. Johnston was born in New York in 1936. He had served with the CIA for 25 years when he began his post at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

James Frederick Lewis served as a paramilitary officer for the CIA at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he and his wife became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Monique Lewis served as a CIA agency officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, she and her husband became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

William R. McIntyre was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1931. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Michigan and served with USAID in India and Pakistan.

McIntyre’s final post was as deputy director of USAID at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

Corporal Robert V. McMaugh served with the Marine Security Guard Detachment at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy.

William R. Sheil was born in 1924. A retired first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he served with the CIA at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. On April 18, 1983, he became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Albert N. Votaw was born in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1925. He graduated from Deep Springs College and earned master’s degrees in economics and anthropology from the University of Chicago. Votaw worked briefly as a reporter before serving in public housing with USAID, serving in Abidjan, Tunis, Bangkok and Beirut.

While at the latter post, Votaw became one of 63 people (including 17 Americans) killed when a car carrying a bomb crashed through the gates of the embassy on April 18, 1983.

George Tsantes was born in 1930. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as an engineer officer aboard the destroyer U.S.S. McNair, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise and several nuclear-power surface vessels. He also commanded the destroyer U.S.S. William M. Wood and the destroyer tender U.S.S. Piedmont.

George Tsantes later earned a master’s degree in physics and earned the rank of captain. In Washington, D.C., he served on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations and in the Navy Atomic Energy Office. In Athens, he was appointed head of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group.

On November 15, 1983, Tsantes and his driver were shot in their stopped car by members of November 17, a leftist guerilla group opposed to the American presence in Greece. Tsantes died of his wounds and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Albert Arthur Schaufelberger III was born in 1950. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as a U.S. Navy Seal and earned the rank of lieutenant commander. Schaufelberger later became the deputy commander of U.S. military advisers in El Salvador.

On May 25, 1983, Schaufelberger was shot at Central American University by members of the Central American Revolutionary Worker’s Party seeking revenge for American intervention in the country. He was the first member of the U.S. military killed in El Salvador following arrival of U.S. military advisors in October 1980.

Charles F. Soper was born in 1939. He served as a security engineering officer at U.S. Embassy New Delhi.

Virginia Warfield was severely injured in a car accident in New Delhi, India, part of a motorcade accompanying then-Secretary of State George Shultz on his official visit to the country. Ms. Warfield, who was stationed in Bombay (now Mumbai) at the time, succumbed to her injuries a few days later.

Leamon R. Hunt was born in Honston, Oklahoma. He served as the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and as deputy assistant secretary of state for operations. In 1981, he became the first director general of Multinational Forces and Observers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, heading the 10-nation coalition monitoring the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

On February 15, 1984, Hunt was shot by members of Red Brigades, an Italian guerilla group, while heading home from work. He died of his wounds in the hospital.

Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth G. Crabtree was born in 1938. He died during a bomb explosion on April 15, 1984, while he was driving to northern Namibia to assess the withdrawal of South African army units from Angola.

Dennis Whyte Keogh was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, a political counselor in South Africa and the director of the U.S. Liaison Office in Windhoek, Namibia. He died during a bomb explosion on April 15, 1984, while he was driving to northern Namibia to assess the withdrawal of South African army units from Angola.

Keogh was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal and the Secretary’s Award. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Michael Ray Wagner was born in Zebulon, North Carolina in 1954. He was a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy and a member of the U.S. Defense Attaché Office in Beirut.

On September 20, 1984, members of the Islamic Jihad Organization attempted to crash a car carrying a bomb into the gates of the new U.S. Embassy in Beirut – relocated to the relatively sheltered suburb of Aukar after the 1983 embassy bombing. Although the driver was shot, the vehicle detonated after hitting a parked van, and the resulting explosion killed Wagner and 23 other individuals (including one other American).

Wagner was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Kenneth V. Welch was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1951. He joined the U.S. Army at age 21 and served in Saigon, Brussels, Tehran, Dublin, Yaoundi and Beijing. At the time of his death he was a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army and a member of the U.S. Defense Attaché Office in Beirut.

On September 20, 1984, members of the Islamic Jihad Organization attempted to crash a car carrying a bomb into the gates of the new U.S. Embassy in Beirut – relocated to the relatively sheltered suburb of Aukar after the 1983 embassy bombing. Although the driver was shot, the vehicle detonated after hitting a parked van, and the resulting explosion killed Welch and 23 other individuals (including one other American).

Welch was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Charles Floyd Hegna was born in 1934 and served as an auditor with USAID in Pakistan. On December 3, 1984, four terrorists hijacked the Kuwait Airways flight on which Hegna was a passenger and forced the pilot to fly to Tehran. The terrorists demanded the release of the Kuwait 17, a group of terrorists arrested for simultaneously bombing six foreign and Kuwaiti installations, in exchange for the release of the passengers.

Hegna was shot and his body dumped on the tarmac, and the remaining passengers were threatened and tortured for six days until Iranian security forces stormed the plane and successfully released them.

William L. Stanford served as an agency officer with USAID in Pakistan. On December 3, 1984, four terrorists hijacked the Kuwait Airways flight on which Stanford was a passenger and forced the pilot to fly to Tehran. The terrorists demanded the release of the Kuwait 17, a group of terrorists arrested for simultaneously bombing six foreign and Kuwaiti installations, in exchange for the release of the passengers.

Stanford was shot and his body dumped on the tarmac, and the remaining passengers were threatened and tortured for six days until Iranian security forces stormed the plane and successfully released them. He was 52 years old.

Enrique Camarena was born in Mexico in 1947. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for two years and later joined the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as an undercover agent.

In 1984, Camarena gave 450 Mexican soldiers the information they needed to destroy a 1,000-hectare marijuana plantation with a yearly output of roughly $8 billion. The drug lord Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo ordered a corrupt group of police officers to kidnap Camarena in retaliation.

In February 1985, Camarena was abducted, tortured for 30 hours and killed. His body was found on March 5.

Camarena posthumously received the DEA’s highest award: the Award of Honor. In 2004, his wife and son established the Enrique S. Camarena Foundation in his memory to combat violence and alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse. The annual Red Ribbon Week – a student program with similar goals – was also established in honor of Camarena.

Bobby Joe Dickson was born in 1957 and lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was a U.S. Marine staff sergeant. On June 19, 1985, he became one of 12 people killed during the Zone Rosa attack on a restaurant by the leftist Central American Revolutionary Worker’s Party.

Thomas T. Handwork was born in Ohio in 1960. He was a U.S. Marine staff sergeant. On June 19, 1985, he became one of 12 people killed during the Zona Rosa attack on a restaurant by the leftist Central American Revolutionary Worker’s Party.

Patrick R. Kwiatkowski was a U.S. Marine sergeant. On June 19, 1985, he became one of 12 people killed during the Zona Rosa attack on a restaurant by the leftist Central American Revolutionary Worker’s Party. He was 20 years old.

Gregory H. Weber was a U.S. Marine sergeant. On June 19, 1985, he became one of 12 people killed during the Zona Rosa attack on a restaurant by the leftist Central American Revolutionary Worker’s Party. He was 24 years old.

William Frank Buckley, Jr. was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1928. He joined the U.S. Army soon after graduating high school, attending Officers Candidate School; the Engineer Officer’s Course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia; the Advanced Armor Officer's Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky; and the Intelligence School at Oberammergau, Germany. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and served in the Korean War.

Following the war, Buckley graduated from Boston University with a degree in political science, joined the CIA briefly and served in Vietnam as a senior advisor to the South Vietnamese army. Buckley later rejoined the CIA, with which he served in Vietnam, Zaire, Cambodia Egypt and Pakistan. During this time, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Buckley’s final post was as a CIA station chief in Beirut with a cover as a Department of State political officer. On March 16, 1984, he was kidnapped from his apartment building by Hezbollah. His captors tortured him into revealing secret information, and he died in 1985 after about 15 months of captivity. It remains unclear if he was executed or died of a heart attack.

Buckley was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He earned numerous awards both before and after his death, including the Silver Star, the Soldier’s Medal, the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Parachutist Badge, the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry (from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam), the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, an Intelligence Star, an Exceptional Service Medal and the Freedom Foundation Award.

James David Marill was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1960. He was a general services officer at the U.S. Embassy in N'Djamena, Chad. On April 12, 1986, he died in a car accident while traveling in Cameroon.

William Edward Nordeen was born in Amery, Wisconsin in 1936. He was a captain in the U.S. Navy and a member of the U.S. Defense and Naval Attaché to U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece. On June 28, 1988, he was killed by a car bomb detonated by the terrorist group 17 November. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Arnold Lewis Raphel was born in Troy, New York in 1942. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College and a master’s degree from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Raphel joined the Foreign Service in 1966. He was a member of the State Department's Special Operations Group set up to free the Americans seized by Iranian militants at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, the special and later deputy assistant to the Secretary of State and, finally, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.

On August 17, 1988, Raphel, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and 29 others died in a plane crash.

Herbert M. Wasson lived in Rockwood, Tennessee. He held a bachelor's degree in industrial arts from Western Kentucky University and a master's degree in international relations from The George Washington University. A Vietnam veteran, he was trained as an artillery and military officer in the U.S. Army. He served as chief of the U.S. Defense Representative to Pakistan, chief of staff of the 101st Airborne Division; deputy director of the Army Staff and Commander of the 528th Field Artillery Group.

At the time of his death, Wassom was a brigadier general and the head of the U.S. military aid mission to Pakistan. On August 17, 1988, he, Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and 29 others died in a plane crash. He was 49 years old.

Wassom’s decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal and the Army Commendation Medal.

Matthew Kevin Gannon was born in 1954 – the eighth of ten children – and grew up in San Juan Capistrano, California. He graduated with a degree in international relations from the University of Southern California, having spent his senior year studying in Europe and the Middle East.

Gannon quickly gained proficiency in Arabic and was assigned to the Near East Division and spent much of his career in the Middle East, with a short post as deputy branch chief of the Counterterrorism Center in Washington, D.C.

Gannon’s final assignment took place in Beirut, Lebanon as deputy chief of station under diplomatic cover. While returning to spend Christmas with his wife and two young children, he became one of 189 Americans killed during the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. Gannon was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

[Source: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/matthew-kevin-gannon/]

Ronald A. Lariviere was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and lived in Alexandria, Virginia. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, performed intelligence work in West Germany and earned the Soldier of the Month Award at Fort Hood, Texas. Lariviere later attended Holyoke Community College and Nichols College before entering the Foreign Service.

While serving with the Department of State, Lariviere served as a bodyguard to Secretary of State George P. Schulz and other State principals. His final post was as a diplomatic security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. While returning to spend Christmas with his wife and young daughter, Lariviere became one of 189 Americans killed during the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988.

Daniel Emmett O’Connor served as a diplomatic security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. On December 21, 1988, he became one of 189 Americans killed during the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi over Lockerbie, Scotland.

James Nicholas Rowe was born in McAllen, Texas in 1938. After graduating high school, he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served in the Vietnam War. Rowe was captured by the Viet Cong after only three months and spent the next five years in captivity – much of it in a tiny bamboo cage – where he posed as a draftee engineer to avoid being forced into revealing top-secret information.

Rowe eventually escaped from his captors and was rescued on December 31, 1968. He later created a class, now required for graduation from the U.S. Army Special Forces Qualification Course, based on his experiences as a POW. He also wrote the book Five Years to Freedom: The True Story of a Vietnam POW about his experiences.

Promoted to colonel, Rowe was assigned in 1987 as chief of the Army division of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory. He helped train the Armed Forces of the Philippines in counter-insurgency technique and attempted to infiltrate the New People’s Army, a communist guerilla group.

On April 21, 1989, Rowe was killed when his armored limousine was hit by gunfire from the New People’s Army. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. During his lifetime he had earned numerous military awards, including the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Prisoner of War Medal.

Marie D. Burke, a resident of New Jersey, joined the Foreign Service in 1971 – a year before her husband, Robert T. Burke, died while serving as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Gambia. Burke served in Gambia, Kenya, Barbados, Florence and the Consular Affairs Office in the State Department.

Burke’s final post was as second secretary in the consular section of the U.S. Embassy in London. On May 25, 1989, she was stabbed to death in her apartment in Paddington. Burke was 63 years old.

John Angelo Butler was born in 1956. He earned a B.A. in political science from the University of San Diego and an M.P.A. from San Diego State University. In 1988, he began work as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in St. George's, Grenada.

On June 29, 1989, Butler was attending a meeting at the St. George police headquarters a when police officer Grafton Bascombe entered the room and began shooting, killing the police commissioner and injuring two high-ranking officers. Butler died attempting to subdue the shooter.

Gladys D. Gilbert served in Ethiopia as a special projects officer with USAID. On October 16, 1989, she became one of 13 people killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia.

Robert W. Woods served with the CIA. While on a humanitarian mission in Ethiopia, he became one of 13 people killed in a plane crash on October 16, 1989.

Thomas J. Worrick served as acting USAID representative in Ethiopia. On October 16, 1989, he, his wife and 11 others were killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia.

Robert B. Hebb served with USAID. October 22, 1989, he became one of 131 people killed in a plane crash in Honduras.

Pasqual Martinez was born in Calexico, California in 1936. He served at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Finland. On February 23, 1991, he was killed in a fire at the Leningrad Hotel in Leningrad, Russia.

Barry S. Castiglione was born in Massachusetts in 1955. After a three-year enlistment in the Marine Corps, he joined the CIA in 1982 as a supply officer trainee. On July 19, 1992, while serving on temporary duty in El Salvador, he and colleagues were at a beach house when one was pulled out to sea by a rip current. He swam out and held her head above water. A colleague arrived and assisted her back to shore. However, Castiglione had exhausted his energies and could not fight his way through the currents to shore. He drowned before help could reach him.

[Source: www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/barry-s-castiglione/]

Thomas P. Doubleday, Jr., was born in New York City in 1942. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Doubleday joined the Foreign Service in 1965. He served in Bangkok, Saigon, Luanda, Lagos, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of International Organizational Affairs, the Bureau of African Affairs, the Bureau of Personnel and the Bureau of Refugee Programs.

Doubleday’s final post was as a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia. He died of a heart attack on February 8, 1993. During his lifetime, he received the Meritorious Honor Award.

Freddie Russel Woodruff was born in 1947 and lived in Oklahoma. He served in the CIA in Leningrad, Turkey, Sudan and Ethiopia.

Woodruff’s final post was as regional affairs officer under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilsi, Georgia. On August 8, 1993, the former Soviet soldier Anzor Sharmaidze, allegedly drunk, shot and killed him. Woodruff was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Nancy Ferebee Lewis served with USAID in Egypt. She died at the health clinic at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Christmas day in 1993 – only a few days after her apartment was treated with a toxic pesticide illegal for residential use in the U.S.

James T. Lederman was killed in an automobile accident in Cairo, Egypt, on March 1, 1994.

Barbara L. Schell served with the Foreign Service in Egypt, Chad, Syria, Algeria and Iran. Her final post was as political advisor to the commanding general of operation in northern Iraq. On April 14, 1994, she became one of 26 people killed when friendly fire caused the Black Hawk helicopter on which she was a passenger to crash.

Gary C. Durell, a resident of Maryland, served in the Air Force for four years before joining the NSA and the Department of State. With the latter organization he served in England, Thailand and Djibouti.

Durell’s final post was as a signals intelligence intercept operator for an organization called the Special Collection Service at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. In March 1995, he became one of two Americans killed when gunmen fired at their van. He was 44 years old.

Jacqueline K. Van Landingham was born in Camden, South Carolina. She graduated from Virginia State University with a degree in food marketing and management and quickly began serving abroad as a CIA operations support assistant under diplomatic cover, in charge of all communication dealing with administration, logistics, security and finance.

Landingham’s final post was in Pakistan under diplomatic cover. In March 1995, she became one of two Americans killed when gunmen fired at their van. She was 33 years old.

[Source: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/jacqueline-k-van-landingham/]

J. Kirby Simon was born in 1970. He spent three years in Taiwan with the Foreign Service and died of carbon monoxide poisoning in April 1995 due to a faulty heater in his apartment. The J. Kirby Simon Foreign Service Trust, which devotes itself to community service among Foreign Service personnel, was established in his memory.

Colonel Samuel Nelson Drew was born in Wurzburg, Germany in 1948. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.

Drew taught political science and national security policy at the Air Force Academy and the National War College, respectively, and became a National Security Fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He further served as U.S. Assistant for Defense Operations and Policy for NATO in Brussels and a NATO Branch Chief in the Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Drew’s final post was as director of European Affairs for the National Security Council. On August 19, 1995, he became one of three American diplomats killed while traveling to Sarajevo to discuss peace plans in the Balkans. The armored vehicle in which he was a passenger fell off a mountainside.

Drew is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. During his lifetime, he earned the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Air Force Commendation Medal.

Robert C. Frasure was born in Morgantown, West Virginia in 1942. He earned a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University, a master’s degree from London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Duke University. Frasure taught at Duke and the University of the South before joining the Foreign Service in 1974.

Frasure served in Geneva, Bonn, Lagos, London, Pretoria, Addis Ababa, Estonia as the first post-Soviet ambassador and the National Security Council as the Africa director. He earned two Department of State Superior Honors for his work.

Frasure’s final post was as deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs. On August 19, 1995, he became one of three American diplomats killed while traveling to Sarajevo to discuss peace plans in the Balkans. The armored vehicle in which he was a passenger fell off a mountainside.

Frasure was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his role in Operation Solomon, the transportation of nearly 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for commitment to peace and the alleviation of human suffering is named in his honor.

Joseph John Kruzel was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1945. He graduated from the Air Force Academy and served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam, a briefing officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Finland.

After earning an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Kruzel worked as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, a legislative assistant for defense and foreign policy for Senator Edward Kennedy and a professor at Duke University and Ohio State University.

In 1993, Kruzel was appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO Policy. He created the Partnership for Peace in order to foster positive relations before NATO and the former Warsaw Pact countries.

On August 19, 1995, Kruzel became one of three American diplomats killed while traveling to Sarajevo to discuss peace plans in the Balkans. The armored vehicle in which he was a passenger fell off a mountainside.

Kruzel was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A Pentagon corridor, an auditorium at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany; and a wing at an Albanian military hospital have all been named in his honor.

Ronald Harmon Brown was born in Washington, D.C. in 1941 and grew up in Harlem, New York. He graduated from Middlebury College and joined the U.S. Army in 1962, serving in South Korea and Europe before earning a law degree from St. John’s University.

Brown briefly served Deputy Executive Director for Programs and Governmental Affairs of the National Urban League, a group dedicated to economic equality, before becoming the manager of Senator Edward Kennedy’s presidential campaign. He later headed Jesse L. Jackson’s convention team at the Democratic National Convention and served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, playing a key role in Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign.

In 1993, President Clinton named Brown Secretary of Commerce. While on an official trade mission, Brown became one of 35 people killed when the Air Force CT-43 crashed over Croatia on April 3, 1996.

Brown was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal. The Ron Brown Award for corporate leadership, the Ronald H. Brown American Innovator Award, the Ron Brown Business Economic Summit, the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development, the Ronald H. Brown fellowship and the Ron Brown Scholar Program were all established in his honor.

Lee Frazer Jackson was born in Glen Ridge, New York in 1966. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Williams College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Jackson then began work as an investment banker and collector-treasurer of Boston.

Jackson later became the U.S. executive director representing his home nation in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. While on an official trade mission, Jackson became one of 35 people killed when the Air Force CT-43 crashed over Croatia on April 3, 1996.

Stephen C. Kaminski was born in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, he served with the Department of Commerce for 21 years in Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Tokyo. In 1994, Kaminski received the Department’s Gold Medal Award for his role in a settlement that opened the Japanese public works market to American businesses. In his free time, he volunteered at Loyola High School and Johns Hopkins University and housed foreign exchange students.

Kaminski’s final post was as counselor for Commercial Affairs to the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria. While on an official trade mission, Kaminski became one of 35 people killed when the Air Force CT-43 crashed over Croatia on April 3, 1996. He was 41 years old.

Leslianne Shedd was born in Binghamton, New York in 1968 and grew up in Washington. She attended the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and served in the CIA under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassies at Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Shedd was among 123 people who died on November 24, 1966, when a drunken group hijacked the plane on which they were passengers and flew it until there was no more fuel. According to survivors, she comforted passengers as the plane was crashing. The Leslianne Shedd Internship Fund for international studies or public health majors was established in her memory.

[Source: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/honoring-heroes/heroes/leslianne-shedd/]

Philip Thomas Lincoln, Jr., was born in 1942. He graduated from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, earned two graduate degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and performed graduate work in economics and Chinese studies at the University of Michigan.

Lincoln served in the Foreign Service from 1966 until his death. His final post was as U.S. consul general in Canton, China. On December 2, 1996, Lincoln died in a car accident in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Lincoln Fellowship for graduate research in Asia was established in his memory.

Jesse Nathan Aliganga was born in Oakland, California in 1976. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps soon after graduating high school and attended training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, the Marine Air Ground Combat Center and Keesler Air Force Base. Aliganga later served in Okinawa, Japan with the 3rd Marine Division and Camp Pendleton with the first Foreign Service Support Group.

In January 1998, Aliganga – now a sergeant – began training at the Marine Security Guard School. His first assignment was at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. On August 7, 1998, he and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda.

Julian Leotis Bartley, Sr. was raised in Queens, New York. A career Foreign Service officer, he served in Santo Domingo, Bogotá, Madrid, Tel Aviv and Seoul.

Bartley’s final post was as U.S. consul general at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On August 7, 1998, he, his son (an intern at the embassy) and 10 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda.

Molly Huckaby Hardy resided in Valdosta, Georgia. She served as a CIA financial officer under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On August 7, 1998, she and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda. She was 51 years old and a new grandmother.

Kenneth R. Hobson II resided in Nevada, Missouri. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in July 1989, serving in the Persian Gulf War and Germany. He earned the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, three Good Conduct Medals, the National Defense Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the Air Assault Badge and the Expert Marksmanship Badge for his service.

A staff sergeant, Hobson served on the Defense Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. On August 7, 1998, he and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda. He was 27 years old.

Prabhi Guptara Kavaler was born in India. She joined the Foreign Service in 1990 and served in Israel, Pakistan, the Philippines, France and Kenya.

Kavaler’s final post was as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On August 7, 1998, she and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda. Her husband, also a Foreign Service officer in Nairobi, had left the embassy only a few minutes earlier to collect information about schools for their two daughters.

Kavaler is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Ann Michelle Deney O’Connor was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She served at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On August 7, 1998, she and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda.

Sherry Lynn Olds was born in Panama City Bay County, Florida in 1958. She graduated from the University of South Carolina and joined the U.S. Air Force, serving for 20 years in Korea, Saudi Arabia and Tyndall Air Force Base.

Olds later became a senior master sergeant. Her final post was at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On August 7, 1998, she and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda.

Uttamlal Thomas “Tom” Shah was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music and Ball State University School of Music.

Shah joined the Foreign Service in 1997 and was on temporary duty as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, on August 7, 1998, when he and 11 other Americans were killed in the bombing of the embassy by Al Qaeda. He was 37 years old.

Seth John Foti served as a U.S. diplomatic courier. On August 23, 2000, Foti and 142 others died in the crash of Gulf Air Flight 72. He was 31 years old.

Barbara J. Green was born in 1962 and lived in Maryland. She served in the Human Resources Center at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. On March 17, 2002, she and her teenage daughter were killed when attackers threw grenades inside the city’s Protestant International Church.

Laurence M. Foley was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1942. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts and San Francisco State University and served with the Peace Corps as both a volunteer in India and an associate director in the Philippines.

In 1998, after working as director of administration at the Rehabilitation Services of Northern California, Foley joined USAID. He served in Bolivia, Peru, Zimbabwe and finally Jordan as supervisory executive officer. On October 28, 2002, Foley was killed by gunmen with terror connections outside his Jordan home.

Edward J. Seitz was born in Parma, Ohio. He graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College and served as a police officer in Cleveland Heights, Ohio before joining the Foreign Service. During 16 years of service, he worked on the Joint Terrorism Task Force and in Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Shenyang, and Sanaa.

Seitz’s last post was as a diplomatic security special agent and assistant regional security officer to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Seitz was killed on October 24, 2004 in a mortar attack on Camp Victory. He was 41 years old.

During his lifetime, Seitz received a group superior honor award for his role in the response to the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, a group meritorious honor award for his service on the protective detail for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a meritorious service increase for exemplary performance as a diplomatic courier.

James Mollen was born in Birmingham, New York. He worked in the 2000 election campaign for President George Bush before joining the Department of State in 2002 by heading the Global Technology Corps in the Bureau of International Information Programs. His final post was as U.S. special advisor to Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. At post, he assembled a medical technology program for Iraqi medical students and was working to develop graduate business schools and executive management education programs.

On November 24, 2004, Mollen was killed by a gunman near the fortified sector of central Baghdad.

Barbara C. Heald was born in 1944 and lived in Falls Church, Virginia. She served as a U.S. Air Force captain before joining the Army's Project and Contracting Office for the Department of Defense as a civilian.

Heald died on January 29, 2005 when a rocket hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and the Barbara C. Heald Deployed Civilian Award was named in her honor.

Keith Edward Taylor was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1957 and lived in Irvine, California. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduating high school and reached the rank of lieutenant commander with tours in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Taylor died on January 29, 2005 when a rocket hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. It was two months before he was scheduled to return home to his family.

Stephen Eric Sullivan was born and raised in Westborough, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school in 1983, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a field radio operator. In 1992 he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and the following year joined the Navy, where he served as a hospital corpsman. Sullivan also worked with at-risk youth and children with special needs. He joined the Diplomatic Security branch of the Foreign Service in 2002.

Assigned to Baghdad, Sullivan was on temporary duty as acting regional security officer in Mosul when a suicide car bomber crashed into his vehicle September 19, 2005.

David E. Foy resided in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He served as a facilities maintenance officer at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. On March 2, 2006, he was killed by a suicide bomber outside the consulate. The David E. Foy Memorial Award for excellence in facility management is named in his honor.

Margaret Ruth Alexander graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, performed graduate work at Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology and earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Alexander worked as a law clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware before joining USAID in 1987 as a legal officer for the Office of the General Counsel. She later served as senior regional legal advisor in East and Central Africa, the Caribbean and Western and Central Africa; assistant general counsel for the Europe and Eurasia Bureau; and chief of the regional legal office in Southern Africa.

Alexander’s final post was at deputy mission director in Kathmandu, Nepal. She died on a helicopter crash there on September 24, 2006. She was 56 years old and a recipient of USAID superior honor award.

Steven Thomas Stefani IV was born in Lakewood, California in 1978. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Nevada - Reno and worked with the U.S. Forest Service as a rangeland management specialist in Northeast Nevada on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Stefani later joined the Foreign Agricultural Service. In the Ghazni province of Afghanistan, he worked with the director of agriculture to create plans for a poultry rearing facility, and taught local farmers how to renew their wasted soil and replant bare hillsides with trees and helped with the creation of a cold storage facility so farmers could preserve their produce.

On October 4, 2007, Stefani was killed by a roadside bomb that impacted his convoy. His goal of building a playground for Ghazni children was completed after his death.

John Michael Granville was born in Buffalo, New York in 1974. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fordham University and a master’s degree in international development and social change from Clark University before studying as a Fulbright Fellow in Africa. He later volunteered in Cameroon with the Peace Corps.

Granville worked with USAID in Kenya and Sudan. During the latter assignment, he headed a program to give 75,000 solar-power radios to South Sudanese citizens.

On January 1, 2008, Granville and his driver were killed by a gunman from the terrorist group Ansar al-Tawhid on the way home after a new year’s party at the British Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.

A native of Oklahoma, Steven Farley was raised in a family in which military had been a way of life for generations. Service to our nation was something that came naturally for him.

Steven began his own life of service as a young Army recruit in 1970. Stationed in Korea, he served alternatively alongside his brother, David, and his father, Noel. And after returning home to complete college and ultimately to receive an MBA, he re-entered military life upon being commissioned as an officer in the U.S Navy in 1980. It was that Navy career that would ultimately lead him to make the final sacrifice of service in Iraq in 2008.

After leaving active duty in 1984, Steven was hand-picked for the pre-commissioning crew of the Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare (MIUW) Unit 113 where he served sequential department head tours which were followed by a tour as Executive Officer and ultimately Commanding Officer.

During his annual active duty training in the Naval Reserve, he became qualified a battle watch officer of US Commanding 2nd Fleet and later US Commanding 7th Fleet. It was his experience with the 7th Fleet and after 9/11, that lead to his first recall to active duty. After one month of returning from a one-year recall, he was ask to voluntarily return to the 7th Fleet Flag Ship USS Blue Ridge as the Assistant Chief of Staff for the Force Protection of the United States.

In March 2007 as U.S. Navy Captain, Steven was recalled for the third time to active duty, this time as a key component in The Surge operation in Iraq, embedded in the 82nd Airborne as the Provincial Reconstruction Team (EPRT). He returned to Iraq in April 2008 with the Department of State as the Senior Advisor in the Governance Directorate in the Communities of Adnamijah and Sadr City comprising more than 3.5 million people, about 50% of Baghdad’s population.

During that operation in 2007 and 2008, Steven was tasked with leading U.S. military and State Department efforts to rebuild war-torn Sadr City and to assist local leaders in the beginning stages of forming self-government.

In February of 2008 he hosted a majority of the Sadr City District Council members on a trip to the U.S. to witness self-government and the fruits of freedom firsthand. He wanted them to see what they were working toward and help them cast a vision of freedom for their people. Returning to Iraq, he and the councilmen set about the task of implementing what they had learned along with taking advantage of critical U.S. funds to rebuild their communities and restore pride and confidence in the Iraqi people.

Steven was convinced his team’s efforts would start a cascading effect that would result in rapid rebuilding, growth, and finally sustainable self-government in Sadr City and in Iraq. On morning of June 24, 2008, an IED was detonated just before the meeting to launch those efforts was to begin. According to reports, Steven, two American soldiers, and a DOD official took the majority of the shrapnel sparing the lives of many of the council members, including the Deputy Chairman who was later to be elected as the new Chairman to continue what they had started.

Brian Daniel Adkins was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1983. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The George Washington University, he began work with the Foreign Service in 2007 as a consular officer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A talented linguist, he spoke seven languages and had previously served as a Pickering Fellow with the State Department in Tunisia. Adkins was stabbed to death in his Ethiopia home on January 31, 2009.

Terrence L. Barnich was born in 1953 and lived in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from Fordham University. Barnich was general consul to former Governor James of Illinois, chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission and co-founder of the consulting firm New Paradigm Resources Group, Inc. before joining the State Department. He served as deputy director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

During his time in Baghdad, Barnich played a key role in advising the Iraqi Electricity Ministry and working out an electricity deal with GE to provide power to millions of homes. He was killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq on May 25, 2009.

Victoria J. Delong was born in 1959. She enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1973 before earning a bachelor’s degree from National University. Delong joined Foreign Service in 1983 and served in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, Germany, Australia, Kuala Lumpur, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mauritius.

Delong’s final post was at Port-au-Prince as a cultural affairs officer. She died in an earthquake in Haiti on January 24, 2010.

Dale J. Gredler was born in in 1967 and grew up in Wenatchee, Washington. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Washington University and a master’s degree in political science and public administration from Illinois State University before volunteering with the Peace Corps in the Philippines. A graduate of the Presidential Management Program, he served as an emergency management program specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency before joining USAID as a financial management specialist in 2001.

Gredler served as an NEP contracting officer in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he helped with reconstruction efforts after a devastating Tsunami, and Almaty, Kazakhstan. He died on January 27, 2010 while en route to the U.S. via London.

Gredler had earned the USAID Meritorious Service Awards twice during his lifetime.

Sharon Sue Weiand Clark was born in Royal Center, Indiana in 1953. Clark was valedictorian of Pioneer High School and briefly attended Purdue University before choosing to pursue a family instead of a career in pharmacology.

Clark later worked in the Johnson County Public Library and earned an associate’s degree in business from the Johnson County Community College. In 2008, she joined the Foreign Service. Clark’s first assignment was two years at the Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. She died at post on December 26, 2010.

Ragaei Said Abdelfattah was born in Egypt in 1969. After moving the U.S., he worked with the U.N. Development Program in Egypt and the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission. At the time of his death, he was pursuing a Ph.D. in planning, governance and globalization at Virginia Technical University.

Abdelfattah joined USAID in 2011 and served two tours in Afghanistan as a field program officer in economic growth. There, he was helping the Afghan government to develop an industrial park in Nangarhar province. Abdelfattah died on August 8, 2012, during a suicide bombing in Kunar province, Afghanistan.

John Christopher Stevens was born in Grass Valley, California in 1960. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California – Berkley, a J.D. from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law and a master’s degree from the National War College. He spent two years teaching English in Morocco with the Peace Corps and briefly practiced law before entering the Foreign Service in 1991.

Stevens served abroad in Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo and Riyadh and domestically as director of the Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs, Pearson Fellow with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, special assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Iran desk officer and staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In May 2012, he became the U.S. ambassador to Libya, where he had previously served as deputy chief of mission and special representative to the National Transitional Council.

Stevens was killed in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi.

Sean Patrick Smith was born in San Diego, California in 1978. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Air Force as a ground radio maintenance specialist, attained the rank of staff sergeant and received the Air Force Commendation Medal for his service. Smith later worked with the Foreign Service as an information management officer in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal and The Hague.

Smith was briefly visiting the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi to set up IT systems when he died on the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks. He was posthumously awarded the Thomas Jefferson Star for Foreign Service.

Glen Anthony Doherty was born in 1970 and grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts. He trained as a pilot at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University and later enlisted as a Navy SEAL, with which he attended the 18 Delta Special Forces Combat Medical School and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He retired a petty officer first class and worked as a security and intelligence specialist with the U.S. government in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kenya and Libya before becoming a CIA contract protective officer.

Doherty was killed in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi.

Tyrone Snowden Woods was born in Imperial Beach, Oregon in 1971. He joined the Navy SEALS after graduating high school, with which led 12 direct action raids and 10 reconnaissance missions leading to the capture of 34 enemy insurgents in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. He received the Bronze Star Medal and retired as a senior chief petty officer before becoming a CIA contract protective officer.

Woods was killed in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi.

Anne Smedinghoff was born in 1987 and grew up in River Forest, Illinois. In 2008, she graduated from Johns Hopkins University with degrees in international studies and Spanish.

Smedinghoff joined the Foreign Service two years later as a public diplomacy-coned officer. She worked as an assistant information officer in the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she helped to support Afghan women and children through sports, music and education and to build positive relationships between Afghans and Americans. She was learning Arabic for future assignments in Cairo and Algeria.

On April 6, 2013, Smedinghoff became one of five Americans killed in a suicide bomb attack in Qalat, Zabul Province.

Antoinette Beaumont Tomasek was born in Manhattan Beach, California in 1972. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and a master’s degree in sociology from American University and volunteered with the Peace Corps in Paraguay.

Tomasek worked with USAID as a community health specialist focusing on water, sanitation and education. She served as a development leadership officer in Indonesia, where she established a program to work with local organizations to prevent and treat tuberculosis, before becoming a health services team leader in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

David Eugene Collins lived in Iowa and held degrees from Central Bible College and Southwestern Assemblies of God University. As an ordained minister, he served in the Assemblies of God and Compassion Ministries Convoy of Hope in Brussels, Belgium before working with the Foreign Service as a financial management officer in Pretoria, South Africa and Lagos, Nigeria.

On April 28, 2013, Collins and his wife were swimming at the beach when they were both caught in an undertow. Collins rescued his wife and escaped the water himself, but died during a 90-minute wait for emergency care. He was 54 years old.

Rayda Nadal joined the Foreign Service in 2008 and served as an office management specialist in Kuwait City, Kabul, Nassau and New Delhi and worked for Ambassador Capricia Marshall at the Office of Protocol in Washington, D.C. Her final post was at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

On May 22, 2014, Nadal was injured in a gas explosion in her apartment. She died of her injuries four days later in a hospital in Linköping, Sweden. She was 37 years old.

Michael AC “Andy” Jordan was serving as an Information Resource Manager at the U.S. Department of State mission in Juba, South Sudan when he suffered a heart attack and died due to inadequate local medical facilities on Sunday, December 18, 2016. He was 43.

Throughout his career, Andy served with distinction at embassies in Baghdad, Brussels, Karachi, Tel Aviv, Lusaka, Tbilisi, and Nairobi. Andy’s unflappable demeanor, innate kindness and ingenuity proved invaluable in Juba and posts worldwide, not just in technical areas, but in morale as well.

Most recently, Andy’s technical skills and creative problem solving have been credited with helping keep the US embassy in Juba operating during this chaotic time in the young country’s history. The US embassy remaining open facilitated many organizations’ ability to communicate and stay in the country to support its vulnerable population. Andy’s humble nature never boasted of this accomplishment or its impact - the US embassy is feeding two million people per month, providing water and sanitation to 250,000 people living in the UN Protection of Civilian camps, and more. None of this would happen if the US embassy in Juba were to shutter. Andy would take no credit or accept attention for himself, rather, he would only cast the light onto others who were part of the solution and credit the team.

Andy was also part of an Ultimate Frisbee team that was composed of a mix of people in Africa. This team went on to play at the Africa Ultimate Frisbee Competition, and his team won the competition.

Despite his numerous professional achievements, Andy’s greatest delight was the family he created. He had no greater pride of accomplishment than his family, and his allegiance to and fierce protection of his wife Deborah and his daughters Madison and Helena.

Andy continually demonstrated admiration for the woman with whom he chose to build a life. He respected Deb’s judgment, experience and resiliency, admired her ability to love and nurture others, and delighted in her ability to bring humor to any situation. He supported and encouraged her with tenderness, respect and honor.

As a father, Andy demonstrated his love not only in time together and strong hugs, but in wise counsel paired with thoughtful consideration and gentle delivery. Andy shared his enjoyment of knowledge, abstract concepts and cultural exploration with Madi and Helena to expand their world and their thought processes. Similarly, Andy demonstrated a keen interest in what the girls found to be important. He frequently wore t-shirts from Helena’s regattas, and he decorated his space with art that Madi had created. Andy cherished each of his daughters just as she is - Madi’s loving heart and artistic view on the human condition and Helena’s warrior heart and steady compass.

Andy and Deb’s teamwork and devotion to their family created a bond that held their little family unit tightly together during difficult times. One only had to have a personal conversation with Andy or see him around his family to know they were his entire world, as he is theirs. This intense love provided strength for Andy as he served in hardship.

If one had the pleasure of seeing Andy’s eyes light with joy and crinkle in the corners, you had the privilege of seeing past the gifted mind, the dedicated professional, the steadfast coworker and into the heart of a kind, selfless, loyal friend.

Selena Nelson-Salcedo, age 38, passed away suddenly on June 4, 2017, in Bratislava, Slovakia, where she was the Consular Chief of the U.S. Embassy. Slovakian doctors misdiagnosed her medical condition, preventing her from receiving treatment that likely would have saved her life. It is unlikely that a similar misdiagnosis would have been made in a U.S. medical facility. Selena was an exceptional human being who had a huge heart, endless empathy, unlimited compassion, as well as being brilliant and accomplished. Selena earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and a Master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She joined the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in 2008, a job that took her to the Dominican Republic, Malaysia and Slovakia. During her tenure with the State Department, she earned many awards and accolades. One of her many passions was learning languages and exploring cultures. When her young life was cut short too soon, she spoke five languages fluently. She was passionate about civil rights and social justice, and spent much of her career working to improve the lives of the poor and disenfranchised around the world. Selena was a dedicated wife and mother. She traveled extensively with her husband, Jorge and their immediate family, and rarely missed an opportunity to live life to the fullest. She will be missed by family and friends with the same ferocity with which she lived and loved life.

Selena is survived by the love of her life, Jorge, and daughters Antonella and Gaia; her parents, Janice Hobbs and Don Nelson, stepmother Mary Kaye Perrin and mother-in-law Consuelo Barbosa; her siblings, Jenna, Jeremy (Clara), Micah (Lindsay) and Simone (John); six nieces and nephews (Henry, Diego, Emma, Max, Homer and Nelson); as well as countless aunts, uncles and cousins.

Selena Nelson-Salcedo was a wonderful and caring mother and friend with endless heart, empathy, and compassion for everyone around her. Selena joined the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in 2008 and traveled to the Dominican Republic, Malaysia and Slovakia. Selena spoke five languages fluently and traveled extensively with her husband, Jorge, and their two daughters. She rarely missed an opportunity to live life to the fullest, which for her meant living and loving heart-first. She loved to advocate for civil rights and social justice and worked for much of her career to improve the lives of the poor and disenfranchised worldwide. She will be deeply missed by her family and friends with the same ferocity with which she lived and loved life.

Mark Andrew Mitchell joined USAID after serving in the U.S. Army, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Defense Intelligence Agency. In USAID, he was posted to Djibouti, Afghanistan, Brazil, and the Republic of Georgia. He died on May 6, 2018 in a vehicle accident in Georgia. Because the local citizen who caused the accident was charged with a vehicular crime, the death met the plaque inscription criterion of being a crime at an overseas post. He was 58 years old.

Nathaniel Philip Lane was born in Wisconsin, raised in Nebraska, educated in Nebraska and Illinois. After becoming a Foreign Service Officer in the Department of State in 2000, he served in Vietnam, Russia, Mexico, Belarus, and Kenya. While on temporary duty in Poland, he was traveling from the embassy to his residence when he was struck by a pole that toppled from a collision with a vehicle. He died on November 2, 2019 at the age of 45.