The Admiral and the Ambassador

by Scott Martelle

  4. Roosevelt to Porter, February 15, 1905, series 1, reel 337, Theodore Roosevelt Papers.

  5. Porter to Hay, March 25, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  6. “Grave of Paul Jones,” Washington Post, February 23, 1905.

  7. “Bones of John Paul Jones,” New York Times, February 25, 1905.

  8. Horace Porter, “The Recovery of the Body of John Paul Jones,” Century, October 1905. The article he referenced could not be found in contemporary press accounts.

  9. Unless otherwise noted, details here are drawn from Porter’s several written reports and articles about the project, most prominently the report contained in Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration, and reports by the attending doctors and anthropologists included in the government reports previously cited, as well as photographs of the scene.

  10. Porter to Hay, April 14, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  16. THE RETURN OF THE HERO

  1. Vignaud to Justice of the Peace, March 20, 1905, record group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, France, volume 0611, National Archives.

  2. See “Report of Engineer Weiss” in Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration, 95; “Echo of Paul Jones Case,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 7, 1907.

  3. Porter to Loomis, June 2, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  4. McCormick to Loomis, June 2, 1905, ibid.

  5. Julius Chambers, News Hunting on Three Continents (New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1921), 366.

  6. “John Paul Jones’s Grave,” New York Tribune Illustrated Supplement.

  7. “Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the General Society Daughters of the Revolution” (1905), 48.

  8. “After Search of 50 Years,” Baltimore Sun, April 16, 1905.

  9. Porter to Loomis, April 21, 1905, and April 30, 1905, record group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, France, volume 0199, National Archives.

  10. “Hay Goes Abroad Ill; Taft Heads Cabinet,” New York Times, March 19, 1905.

  11. William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 399–407.

  12. Details gleaned from contemporary news accounts, too many to list concisely. Consult, particularly, the New York Times, Washington Post, and New York Sun for the spring and summer of 1905.

  17. A CELEBRATION AND A DELAY

  1. Porter to Loomis, April 21, 1905, record group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, France, volume 0199, National Archives.

  2. “Our Gorgeous Paris Embassy,” New York Times, May 7, 1905.

  3. “Selecting a Squadron,” Washington Post, May 11, 1905.

  4. Porter to Loomis, May 19, 1905, record group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, France, Volume 0199, National Archives.

  5. McCormick to Loomis, June 17, 1905, and Porter to Loomis, July 1, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  6. “Will Embark at Havre,” Washington Post, June 11, 1905.

  7. McCormick to Loomis, June 20, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  8. Unless otherwise noted, details drawn from Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration, 101.

  9. Details of ship position and discipline issues drawn from record group 24, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, Logs of Ships and Stations, 1801–1946, Brooklyn, 5-17-1905 to 1-22-1906, National Archives, Washington, DC.

  10. “Sigsbee Ships in Port,” Washington Post, July 1, 1905.

  11. Report found in box 16, folder 12, Charles D. Sigsbee Papers, New York State Library, Albany, NY.

  12. Henri Marion, John Paul Jones’s Last Cruise and Final Resting Place (Washington, DC: George E. Howard, 1906), 13.

  13. McCormick to SecState, July 1, 1905, record group 59, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to France, 1789–1906, roll 127, National Archives.

  14. Unless otherwise specified, details of the Paris trip and ceremonies surrounding the transfer of the body are drawn from contemporary news accounts too numerous to cite individually.

  15. The texts of the speeches from that day are included in Marion, Jones’ Last Cruise, 25–41.

  16. Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration, 111.

  17. Letter from the Bureau of Navigation, July 12, 1905, record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1, Nimitz Library, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.

  18. “Annapolis Thronged,” Baltimore Sun, July 24, 1905.

  19. Orders, record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1; and “Paul Jones’ Body Ashore,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 25, 1905.

  18. ANNAPOLIS CELEBRATES

  1. “Porter Sure He Found Body of Navy’s Father,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 14, 1905.

  2. Roosevelt to Long, December 27, 1897, reprinted in Senate doc. no. 55, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess. Other details included here are drawn from the same report.

  3. For a good overview of Ernest Flagg’s successes and controversies, see Mardges Bacon, Ernest Flagg: Beaux-Arts Architect and Urban Reformer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). The brother reference is on page 72; the Academy project is on pages 112–137.

  4. Ernest Flagg, “New Buildings for the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.,” pt. 1, American Architect and Building News, July 1, 1908. Flagg’s two-part series will be useful to anyone with an interest in how the modern physical space of the academy came into being.

  5. “Dewey Lays a Cornerstone,” New York Times, June 4, 1904.

  6. Flagg to Brownson, April 15, 1905, record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1, Nimitz Library.

  7. H. Coy Glidden, ed., Sail and Sweep, vol. 3 (Detroit: Sail and Sweep Publishing, 1904), 397–398.

  8. Porter to Bonaparte, July 25, 1905, General Correspondence, Letters Received While Secretary of the Navy, 1905–1906, box 124 (L–Q), Charles J. Bonaparte Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  9. Roosevelt to Bonaparte, August 1, 1905, box 132, Special Correspondence with Theodore Roosevelt, 1905–1909, Charles J. Bonaparte Papers.

  10. The exchanges are in General Correspondence, Letters Received While Secretary of the Navy, 1905–1906, box 124 (L–Q), Charles J. Bonaparte Papers.

  11. Roosevelt to Bonaparte, April 17, 1906, General Correspondence, Letters Received While Secretary of the Navy from the White House, 1905–1906, box 126, Charles J. Bonaparte Papers.

  12. Unless otherwise noted, logistical details are drawn from letters and orders contained in record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1, Nimitz Library; “Some Go in Yachts,” April 24, 1906, and “M. and M. Had Jolly Time,” April 25, 1906, both Baltimore Sun.

  13. “With Holiday Spirit,” Washington Post, April 24, 1906.

  14. Unless otherwise noted, details are drawn from Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration.

  19. “STOWED AWAY LIKE OLD LUMBER”

  1. Porter to Loud, December 3, 1910, reprinted in House of Representatives rpt. no. 2114, 61st Cong., 3rd Sess., February 9, 1911.

  2. “Paul Jones Buried Here,” Boston Evening Transcript, December 23, 1911.

  3. In a fitting symmetry, the questions about the identity continue to be raised more than a century after the body was found. For a good overview of the skepticism, see Adam Goodheart, “Home Is the Sailor,” Smithsonian, April 2006. Most of the following details are drawn from Goodheart’s piece, and from Nikki L. Rogers, et al., “The Belated Autopsy and Identification of an Eighteenth Century Naval Hero—The Saga of John Paul Jones,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 49, no. 5 (September 2004); Nikki L. Rogers, “The Identification of John Paul Jones; The First Use of Photography in Forensic Facial Superimposition,” Journal of Forensic Identification 55, no.
3 (May 2005); and Nikki L. Rogers and Adam Goodheart, “Historic Superimposed Image of John Paul Jones Was the Brainchild of American Diplomat Horace Porter,” Journal of Forensic Identification 8, no. 6 (November 2008).

  4. “The Unidentified Corpse,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1905.

  5. Park Benjamin Jr., “Is It Paul Jones’s Body?” Independent, July 20, 1905.

  6. Hart and Biddle, Memoirs of the Life and Works of Jean Antoine Houdon, 144.

  7. See the Rogers articles listed in note 3.

  8. Rogers, et al., “Belated Autopsy,” 1046.

  9. In the modern era, DNA testing could resolve the issue, a point historian Adam Goodheart raised in his article “Home Is the Sailor” in the April 2006 issue of Smithsonian magazine. The chapel at Annapolis also possesses a medal with Jones’s likeness and a lock of his hair, which could be compared with a DNA sample from the corpse (if one could be obtained), but that begs the question of the authenticity of the lock of hair. And down the rabbit hole of doubt and second-guessing we go.

  10. Darling to USNA superintendent, July 5, 1905, record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1, Nimitz Library.

  11. Bonaparte to Senator Eugene Hale, chair of the US Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, April 26, 1906, included in House of Representatives rpt. no. 2114, 61st Cong., 3rd Sess., February 9, 1911.

  12. The exchange of letters is in record group 405, Records of the US Naval Academy, box 10, folder 1, Nimitz Library.

  13. “Slow Erecting Tomb,” Washington Post, December 19, 1910.

  14. Porter to unspecified recipient, May 28, 1910, excerpted in House of Representatives rpt. no. 2114, 61st Cong., 3rd Sess., February 9, 1911.

  15. See Congressional Record for February 20, 1911, 3026–27.

  16. “Photographs: Historical and Descriptive Data,” Historic American Buildings Survey, National Architectural and Engineering Record, National Park Service, accessible via Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/md/md0900/md0915/data/md0915data.pdf.

  17. “Carnegie in Alarmist Roll,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 22, 1909.

  18. “Noted Men at Bier of General Porter,” New York Times, June 3, 1921; unless otherwise noted, these details are drawn from contemporary news accounts of the funeral and burial.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ARCHIVES

  Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives, Leatherby Libraries, Chapman University, Orange, California.

  George Leland Dyer Papers (#340), Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.

  Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC: papers (among others) of John Hay, Horace Porter, Theodore Roosevelt, William S. Sims.

  Library of Congress, Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, Washington, DC.

  National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  National Archives, Washington, DC.

  Navy Department Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

  Nimitz Library, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.

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