Jefferson Caffery

Ambassador Jefferson Caffery

Jefferson Caffery (December 1, 1886 – April 13, 1974) served as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador (1926–1928), Colombia (1928–1933), Cuba (1934–1937), Brazil (1937–1944), France (1944–1949), and Egypt (1949–1955).

Career

Caffery launched his career of international diplomacy in 1911 when he entered the Foreign Service as second secretary of the legation in Caracas in 1911 during the William Howard Taft administration.

He traveled to Iran (then named Persia) in 1916, to Paris after World War I with President Wilson’s peacemakers, then to Washington, D.C., to arrange details for visits by the King of Belgium and the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he was named second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. In 1933, Caffery briefly served as assistant secretary of state under Cordell Hull. Throughout his career he also had worked in lower-ranking diplomatic posts in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Japan, Persia, Sweden, and Venezuela.

In 1934, while ambassador to Cuba, four assailants attempted an assassination of Cafferty in front of his residence in Havana. The assailants waited outside of his residence for his daily departure to his yacht club. One assailant was killed by a bodyguard, the others escaped. Ambassador Caffery was not hurt. The event was reported on the front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune, dated May 28, 1934.

In total, he worked 43 years in foreign service under eight presidents, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower.

He was awarded the Foreign Service Cup in 1971 by his fellow Foreign Service officers. He held several honorary degrees and decorations, including the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, in 1954. He received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor from the president of France in 1949 and the Order of the Cordon of the Republic from the president of Egypt in 1955.

Personal life

Caffery was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, to Charles Duval Caffery and the former Mary Catherine Parkerson. He was privately educated in primary and secondary school. He was a member of the first graduating class of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then called the Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute). He also graduated with a bachelor's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1906. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1909.

Caffery married the former Gertrude McCarthy of Evansville, Indiana, in 1937, while in Rio de Janeiro. They had no children. He retired with his wife in 1955 to reside in Rome, where he was the honorary private chamberlain to Popes Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, and Paul VI. He returned to Lafayette in 1973, shortly before Mrs. Caffery's death.

The Cafferys are buried behind St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette. A portion of Louisiana Highway 3073 in Lafayette is named Ambassador Caffery Parkway in his memory.

In 2000, Caffery was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield. Caffery is the cousin of U.S. Senator Donelson Caffery and U.S. Representative Patrick Caffery

See also

• Donelson Caffery
• Patrick T. Caffery

References

• "Jefferson Caffery". A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography. 1. New Orleans, La.: Louisiana Historical Association. 1988. pp. 141. OCLC 18400915. ISBN 0940984377. 
• Dur, Philip F. (1974). "Jefferson Caffery of Louisiana: Highlights of His Career, Part I: 1911-1933". Louisiana History (Louisiana Historical Association) XV. ISSN 0024-6816. OCLC 1782994. 
• Dur, Philip F. (1974). "Jefferson Caffery of Louisiana: Highlights of His Career, Part II: 1933-1944". Louisiana History (Louisiana Historical Association) XV. ISSN 0024-6816. OCLC 1782994. 
• Corrigan, Robert Foster (November 1967). "An Appreciation of a Diplomat". Foreign Service Journal (Washington: American Foreign Service Association). ISSN 0146-3543. 

External links

• Cemetery Memorial by La-Cemeteries

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Montgomery Schuyler	U.S. Minister to El Salvador 20 July 1926–22 July 1928	Succeeded by Warren D. Robbins
Preceded by Samuel H. Piles	United States Minister to Colombia 28 November 1928–20 May 1933	Succeeded by Sheldon Whitehouse
Preceded by Sumner Welles	United States Ambassador to Cuba 1934-1937	Succeeded by J. Butler Wright
Preceded by Hugh S. Gibson	United States Ambassador to Brazil 17 August 1937–17 September 1944	Succeeded by Adolf A. Berle, Jr.
Preceded by William D. Leahy (to 1942)	United States Ambassador to France 1944-1949	Succeeded by David K. E. Bruce
Preceded by Stanton Griffis	United States Ambassador to Egypt 1949-1955	Succeeded by Henry A. Byroade