John Lambert Cadwalader

John Lambert Cadwalader (November 11, 1836 – March 11, 1914) was an American lawyer.

John Lambert Cadwalader
10th United States Assistant Secretary of State
In office June 17, 1874 – March 20, 1877
President	Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes
Preceded by	J.C. Bancroft Davis
Succeeded by	Frederick W. Seward
Personal details
Born	November 17, 1836 Trenton, New Jersey
Died	March 11, 1914 (aged 77) New York City
Political party	Republican
Relations	Samuel L. Gouverneur (uncle) Lambert Cadwalader (grandfather)
Parents	Thomas McCall Cadwalader Maria Charlotte Gouverneur
Alma mater	Princeton University Harvard Law School

Early life

John Lambert Cadwalader was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on November 17, 1836. He was the eldest son of General Thomas McCall Cadwalader (1795–1873) and the former Maria Charlotte Gouverneur (1801–1867). His siblings included Emily Cadwalader (wife of William Henry Rawle), Mary Cadwalader (wife of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell), Richard McCall Cadwalader (husband of Christine Biddle), and Maria Cadwalader (wife of John Hone).[1]

On his paternal side, his grandfather was Lambert Cadwalader, and his great-grandfather was Thomas Cadwalader.[1] His maternal uncle was Samuel L. Gouverneur. His mother was a niece of Elizabeth (née Kortright) Monroe, the wife of U.S. President James Monroe.[1]

He graduated from Princeton University in 1856, then obtained an M.A. degree in 1859 from Princeton, and LLB from Harvard Law School in 1860.[2]

Career

He served as United States Assistant Secretary of State from 1874 to 1877, serving under Republican Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes and Secretaries Hamilton Fish and William M. Evarts. In 1878, he became a name partner of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest continuously operating law firm in the United States, which still carries his name.[3] In 1905 he became a life member of the American Academy in Rome, where he acted as an adviser during the Academy's incorporation process.[4] From 1906 to 1907, he served as president of the New York City Bar Association.[5] He was an early trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[6]

In 1909, he was mentioned as the successor of Whitelaw Reid as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom under President William Howard Taft, as urged by Taft's Attorney General George W. Wickersham, but Taft "finally decided to retain Mr. Reid."[2]

Cadwalader was at one time president of the New York City Bar Association, but his most prominent connection in the minds of the public was with the New York Public Library, of which he was elected the second president, as the successor of John Bigelow. For many years before his election to this office, he had been a member of the board of trustees and of the executive committee of the library. He probably did more, in the form of personal activities, for the library service of New York City than any other man. He worked out the plans for combining the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden foundations into one great, central library, and was instrumental in the material carrying out of this conception. He also devoted a great deal of thought to the planning out of the building that housed the library.[7]

Personal life

Cadwalader was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and left the furnishings of his home on East 56th Street to the museum.[8] In 1912,[9] he was sketched by John Singer Sargent.[10]

He was on the board of the New York Zoological Society (now Wildlife Conservation Society). He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Sons of the Revolution, the American Fine Arts Society, and the American Museum of Natural History. His clubs included the Century Association, the Union League Club, Lawyers' Club, Union Club, Metropolitan Club, Knickerbocker Club, University Club, Princeton Club, and New York Yacht Club, all of New York City.[7]

Cadwalader, who never married,[7][lower-alpha 1] died at his home, 3 East 56th Street in New York City on March 11, 1914.[2] After a funeral at Grace Church in Manhattan, he was buried at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. In his will, he left to "each of the clerks in the office of Strong & Cadwalader," who had been working for the firm for five years prior to his death, "a sum of money equal to six times their monthly wage."[11]

Family tree

References

Notes

1. Although Cadwalader never married, he was said to have been a "fatherly presence" in the life of noted landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, the daughter of his cousin, Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones and Frederic Rhinelander Jones (brother of novelist Edith Wharton).[10]

Sources

1. Charles Penrose Keith (1883). The provincial councillors of Pennsylvania, who held office between 1733-1776: and those earlier councillors who were some time chief magistrates of the province, and their descendants. W.S. Sharp Printing Company. pp. 387–389.
2. "J. L. Cadwalader, Lawyer, Dies at 77:President of New York City Bar Association and Public Library Was Long Ill" (PDF). New York Times. March 12, 1914.
3. "History". official web page. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. March 12, 2011.
4. "Finding Aid". American Academy in Rome records, 1855-[ca.1981], (bulk dates 1894-1946). Archives of American Art. 2011. Retrieved 17 Jun 2011.
5. Henry Waters Taft (1920). "John Lambert Cadwalader, an appreciation". Occasional papers and addresses of an American lawyer. Macmillan. pp. 325–331. Paper read at the opening of the Trenton Public Library on April 6, 1915.
6. Annual Report. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1918. p. 240.
7.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Cadwalader, John Lambert" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
8. Durr Friedley (May 1914). "The Bequest of John L. Cadwalader". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 9 (5): 106–111. JSTOR 3253859.
9. "John Lambert Cadwalader". npg.si.edu. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
10. Karson, Robin S. (2007). A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era. Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 134. ISBN 9781558496361. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
11. "GIFTS OF $195,000 BY J. L. CADWALADER; Lawyer's Will Also Leaves $50,000 to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Who Died Before Him" (PDF). The New York Times. 22 March 1914. Retrieved 28 October 2019.

External links

• John Lambert Cadwalader at Find a Grave