Charles MacVeagh

Charles MacVeagh came of interesting stock; it may be said that he was born into achievement at the bar and distinction in government service. His father, the well-remembered Wayne MacVeagh of another generation, won celebrity as the personal delegate whom President Hayes sent down to Louisiana to end the régime of military occupation that had followed the Civil War. He was Garfield’s Attorney-general, and he is still remembered most vividly as one of the group of wits that gave salt to the after-dinner speeches of the Nineties. The family’s record had been amplified by the four-year service of Franklin MacVeagh as Taft’s Secretary of the Treasury. Our own MacVeagh reproduced the family qualities. Endowed with social amenities, he also practiced with great success in one of New York’s celebrated law firms. He was the United States Steel corporation’s solicitor; but eventually politics beckoned him as it had called his father and his uncle. During the four years after 1925 he served as Ambassador to Japan, where the people still remember him for his help in the earthquake disaster of 1927.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1932 Century Association Yearbook