Diplomat/City Founder
Centurion, 1855–1891
Born 15 June 1823 in Woodbury, Connecticut
Died 21 May 1891 in Healing Springs, Virginia
Buried Long Hill Burial Ground
, Shelton, Connecticut
Proposed by J. Howard Wainwright
Elected 5 May 1855 at age thirty-one
Century Memorial
Henry Shelton Sanford was for more years than ordinarily fall to the lot of American citizens engaged in the diplomatic service of the United States.
Beginning as Secretary of Legation under Ralph I. Ingersoll at St. Petersburg, he served afterwards at Frankfort under Andrew J. Donelson, and at Paris under John Y. Mason. From 1861 to 1869 he was United States Minister to Belgium, and rendered his Government valuable service during the war. He was one of the founders of the Independent State of the Congo, and United States delegate to the Berlin Congo Conference in 1885, which opened to free trade and neutrality the entire State which includes one million square miles with a population of fifty million people, and was afterwards a delegate to the Brussels Anti-Slavery Congress.
Of late years he had given much time to the development of the City of Sanford, in Florida, of which he was the founder.
Henry E. Howland
1892 Century Association Yearbook
