William Leonard Benedict

William Leonard Benedict was a well-known banker, conducting for many years the New York activities of Kidder, Peabody & Co., of Boston. He had shared in the firm’s responsibilities during forty-seven successive years. With all his engrossing business responsibilities, Benedict indulged to the full his taste in literature and scholarship, going so far as to vary his down-town responsibilities by mastering the advanced course in mathematics at Columbia. His friends were interested in the high decorations which the Italian and Japanese governments had conferred upon him. Italy gave him the Order of the Italian Crown for his part in negotiating in America that government’s dollar war loan. But the Japanese decoration, personally conferred by Baron Kaneko in behalf of the Emperor, was recognition of Benedict’s much less commonplace service of assisting personally in drafting Japan’s new constitution.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1936 Century Association Yearbook