Edwin Denby

The title of this article is ambiguous. On the dancer and poet, see Edwin Orr Denby .

Edwin Denby

Denby's wife as godmother at the launching of the USS Shenandoah on December 10, 1923

Edwin Denby (* 18th February 1870 in Evansville , Indiana ; † 8. February 1929 in Detroit , Michigan ) was an American lawyer and politician ( Republican Party ), both deputy in the United States House of Representatives and US Secretary of the Navy was .

biography

Denby was the grandson of Graham N. Fitch , who was also a member of the House of Representatives and a US Senator for Indiana . After attending public schools, he followed his father Charles Harvey Denby to the Chinese Empire in 1885 , where he was the US envoy . Denby himself was from 1887 to 1894 an employee of the customs service of the Imperial Chinese Navy. After returning to the United States in 1894, he studied law at the University of Michigan and graduated in 1896. After his admission to the bar in the state of Michigan in 1896, he settled as a lawyer in Detroit.

During the Spanish-American War of 1898 he did his military service in the US Navy as a Gunner's Mate 3rd Class ( Geschützmaat 3rd class) on the auxiliary cruiser USS Yosemite .

He began his political career in 1903 when he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives . He was then elected as a Republican candidate for a member of the US House of Representatives for Michigan and represented there after further re-elections from March 4, 1905 to March 3, 1911 the 1st  Congressional constituency of the state. After his renewed candidacy for the 66th Congress of the United States had failed in 1910  , he resumed his legal practice in Detroit and was also active in banking and other companies. Between 1913 and 1914 he was President of the Charter Commission and then from 1916 to 1917 President of the Detroit Board of Commerce .

Denby (left) with his predecessor as Minister of the Navy, Josephus Daniels , on March 4, 1921

In 1917 he resigned after the US entry into the First World War as a private first class ( private ) in the US Marine Corps (USMC) and retired after the war in 1919 as a Major from the military service. He then became the head of the probation department of the Recorder's Court , a special court for minor offenses in Detroit and in 1920 the District Court in Wayne County .

On March 4, 1921, Edwin Denby was appointed Secretary of the Navy by US President Warren G. Harding in his cabinet after his victory in the presidential election . His wife was on December 10, 1923 godmother when launching the USS Shenandoah . After Harding's death, he kept the office of Minister of the Navy in the cabinet of his successor Calvin Coolidge until his resignation on March 10, 1924 because of the so-called Teapot Dome scandal , a bribery affair that involved the granting of oil production rights in Wyoming and Interior Minister Albert B. Fall was particularly involved. He went down as the first cabinet member in US history to actually serve a prison sentence for crimes committed during his tenure (in this case, bribery).

Denby himself worked as a lawyer and for some companies until his death.

Web links

• Edwin Denby in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Edwin Denby in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)