He graduated in 1891 from the law department of University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Sigma Chapter of the Zeta Psi Fraternity. Griscom continued his legal studies at the New York Law School.[3] He later received a Doctor of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907.[1]
Career
A photograph from 1909, at Centocelle Field outside of Rome, Italy, with King Victor Emmanuel III, Wilbur Wright, and Ambassador Griscom(*error/ this is actually Orville Wright), 1909.
While serving a short period as Secretary of Legation and chargé d' affaires at Constantinople, the 28-year-old Griscom made a notable achievement in 1900 by persuading the Sultan to purchase what would become the Ottoman cruiser Mecidiye from the American shipbuilder William Cramp & Sons.[6] Shortly afterward, he was appointed Minister to Persia in 1901.[7] He held the corresponding post in Japan (1902–1906) and was ambassador to Brazil (1906–1907) and to Italy (1907–1909).[7]
Griscom's primary significance was as an advocate for globalized free trade as a means to promote peaceful development in accordance with his Quaker faith. In the Middle East he worked for better relations between Muslims and Christians, and he played a major role in the relief effort in Italy after the 1908 Messina earthquake took 50,000 lives.
Prior to the death of Secretary of State John Hay in 1905, Griscom was offered the post of First Assistant Secretary of State. The appointment of Elihu Root to succeed Hay nullified Griscom's appointment to the State Department position.[1]
In 1940, he published a memoir of his professional life, Diplomatically Speaking,[10] covering his life from youth and his student days at the University of Pennsylvania to his homecoming as an Army officer after the end of World War One in 1919. In the first year it sold more than 90,000 copies in America before it was published in England. The Rt. Hon. Leo Amery, M.P., commented that "My old friend Lloyd Griscom gives a delightfully breezy picture as seen through American eyes of Edwardian England, of the diplomatic world, of many countries."[11]
Later life
Following his retirement from public service, he bought and became the publisher of several Long Island newspapers, including the East Norwich Enterprise, the North Hempstead Record, and the Nassau Daily Star. Griscom purchased the Tallahassee [Florida] Democrat in 1929 owning it until his death in 1959. He was a cousin by marriage to Wolcott Gibbs, who later worked at several of Griscom's Long Island newspapers.[12][13]
After her death in 1914, he remarried to Audrey Margaret Elizabeth Crosse (1900–1975) in England on October 3, 1929.[14] Audrey was the daughter of Marlborough Crosse and the niece of C. E. Barnwell Ewins of Marston Trussell Hall in Leicestershire.[28] His best man at the wedding was Brig. Gen. Sir Charles Delmé-Radcliffe (who married the daughter of Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet), who was British military attaché at Rome while Griscom was envoy there.[14]
Griscom died of a stroke on February 8, 1959, at Archbold Memorial Hospital in Thomasville, Georgia while visiting his sister Frances who was a patient there.[29][30] After his death, his widow, who inherited the bulk of his estate including the Leon countyLuna Plantation as well as the Tallahassee Democrat, which she ran from 1958 through 1965.[31]
References
Salvatore Prisco, "Progressive Era Diplomat: Lloyd C. Griscom and Trade Expansion," DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT, 18 (September 2007), 539–549.
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