I’ve talked about John several times so I thought I would consolidate all of them here into one post (something I need to do for a few topics from over the past 15 years of sharing).
Where does John fit into the family? John is my 6th cousin 3x removed. You can see how he fits into the family tree below.
I’ve also shared some information about his parents and two of his children (Joan, Frank, and Lois).
Here his bio from the John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers.
Biography of Junius Wilson MacMurray (1944-1898) and John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1881-1960)
Junius Wilson MacMurray was born in Missouri, the son of Irish immigrant and blacksmith John Dennison MacMurray and Eliza Wilson. At the outbreak of the Civil War he recruited a company for the Union army, which was sworn in with the 1st Missouri Volunteers and reorganized into the 1st Missoury Light Artillery. After participating with his battery in the Battle of Vicksburg he was promoted Captain in 1863. At the end of the Civil War MacMurray participated in the Powder River Indian Expedition into Wyoming and Montana (June-November 1865). He joined the regular army in 1866 and graduated from the Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Virginia in 1870.
MacMurray served as professor of military science and tactics on detail at the University of Missouri (1872-1873) and at Cornell University (1873-1875). He taught on detached service at Union College at Schenectady, New York, where he was in charge of sanitary and landscape engineering (1879-1883). While in Schenectady he was editor of A History of the Schenectady Patent in the Dutch and English Times; being Contributions toward a History of the Lower Mohawk Valley, by Jonathan Pearson et al. (1883). In the summer of 1884, while stationed at Vancouver Barracks, WA, he served as Special Inspector of Indian Affairs and spent considerable time with the Native Americans of the region and their leader and prophet Smohalla. He shared his observations about these “Dreamers” of the Columbia River Valley in a lecture at the Albany Institute, which was published in 1886.
Additional places where MacMurray was stationed include Wadsworth, NY, and Fort Barrancas, Florida, where he contracted yellow fever during an outbreak in 1897. He died in May 1898, two months after he was promoted Major. In 1873, he married to Henrietta Van Antwerp, daughter of John H. Van Antwerp of Albany, and they had three children: Edna, Ethel and John Van Antwerp MacMurray.
John Van Antwerp MacMurray was born in Schenectady, New York on October 6, 1881 and entered boarding school in 1892 before attending Princeton University (1898-1902). After a year of travel in Europe he entered Columbia Law School in 1903. In 1906 MacMurray was admitted to the New York Bar, though he also sought to secure a position within the Foreign Service. While waiting for an appointment, he studied Elizabethan drama at Princeton, and in 1907 received a master of arts degree. That same year he was appointed Secretary of Legation and Consul General at Bangkok, Siam, followed by a position as Second Secretary of the embassy in St. Petersburg (1908-1911). After a brief interlude as Assistant Chief of the Division of Information, he became Assistant Chief and then Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department (1911-1913).
MacMurray started specializing in Far Eastern affairs with his consecutive appointments as Secretary of Legation in Peking (1913-1917), Counselor of the Embassy in Tokyo (1917-1919), and, back at the State Department, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (1919-1924). In 1921 he published Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China. In the same year he served as expert assistant on Pacific and Far Eastern affairs to American Commissioners at the International Conference on the Limitation of Armament in Washington. He also was an observer for the U.S. government at the Chinese-Japanese negotiations for the settlement of the Shantung question (1921-1922). In 1924 MacMurray became Assistant Secretary of State, but one year later he was appointed Minister to China (1925-1929), a position he desired. The unstable situation in China, however, soon led to conficts between MacMurray and his superiors at the State Department. This ultimately led MacMurray to resign in 1929, when he accepted an offer to become Director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University.
Faced with the fact that he could not secure enough funding for the Walter Hines Page School MacMurray relinquished his salary and reentered the Foreign Service in 1933, though he officially retained his position until 1935. President Roosevelt appointed him as Minister to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (1933-1936), which was followed by an ambassadorship to Turkey (1936-1942). In these years, he also served as the Assistant Chairman of the International Wheat Advisory Committee (1933-1938) and chaired the Joint Preparatory Committee on Philippine Affairs (1937-1938). His last two years before retirement were spent back at the State Department as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State (1942-1944).
MacMurray married Lois R. Goodnow in 1916 and they had three children: Joan Goodnow, Frank Goodnow, and Lois (“Bisi”) Van Antwerp MacMurray. He died at his home in Norfolk, Connecticut on September 25, 1960.
Who was John? John was a career foreign service officer who had many roles (see below)…
- Assistant Secretary of State
Appointed: November 18, 1924
Entry on Duty: November 19, 1924
Termination of Appointment: May 19, 1925- Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned after confirmation on Jan 3, 1925.
- Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (China)
Appointed: April 9, 1925
Presentation of Credentials: July 15, 1925
Termination of Mission: Left post on November 22, 1929- Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned on December 17, 1925, after confirmation. Commissioned to China.
- Concurrent Appointments
- Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Lithuania)
Appointed: August 28, 1933
Presentation of Credentials: December 20, 1933
Termination of Mission: Left Kaunas on February 13, 1936- Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned on January 15, 1934, after confirmation. MacMurray had departed from Riga on February 12, 1936. Also accredited to Latvia and Estonia; resident at Riga.
- Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Latvia)
Appointed: August 28, 1933
Presentation of Credentials: December 13, 1933
Termination of Mission: Left post on February 12, 1936- Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned on January 15, 1934, after confirmation. Also accredited to Lithuania and Estonia; resident at Riga.
- Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Estonia)
Appointed: August 28, 1933
Presentation of Credentials: January 4, 1934
Termination of Mission: Left Riga February 12, 1936- Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned on January 15, 1934, after confirmation. Also accredited to Lithuania and Latvia; resident at Riga.
- Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Lithuania)
- Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (Turkey)
Appointed: January 24, 1936
Presentation of Credentials: March 16, 1936
Termination of Mission: Left post on November 28, 1941
What can we learn about him from Wikipedia? There’s a lot out there along with some good references for futher research.
What pictures do we have of him?
John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1881-1960) was the US Minister to China; Sir Miles Lampson, the British Minister. (c) 2008 Charlotte Thomas (downloaded from website)
University of Bristol – Historical Photographs of China reference number: Ph04-201.
John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1881-1960) was the US Minister to China; Sir Miles Lampson, the British Minister. (c) 2008 Charlotte Thomas (downloaded from website)
University of Bristol – Historical Photographs of China reference number: Ph04-201.
Here’s an old picture of him with his dog that was shared in 2020.
What else can we learn about him? This Princeton blog post shares a lot…here’s some of it.
Princeton Meets the Near East: John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s Ambassadorship in Turkey
Posted on by April C. Armstrong *14
By Diana Dayoub ’21
The connections between Princeton and the Near East are not self-evident. My tentative effort to uncover some link between the North American university I consider home now and the part of the Orient where I was born and raised seemed almost futile until I discovered the John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers (MC094). John Van Antwerp MacMurray, a member of Princeton’s class of 1902 and a career diplomat, served as the United States’ ambassador to Turkey from 1936 to 1942. He was previously appointed minister to China from 1925 to 1929 and minister to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from 1933 to 1936. The part of this collection that concerns Turkey includes MacMurray’s family correspondence (notably with his two sisters Edna and Ethel, with whom he was very close), photographs that capture the breathtaking scenery of mountainous Turkey, and negatives that are yet to be digitized.
John Van Antwerp MacMurray in Turkey. John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers (MC094), Box 151.
Although MacMurray was appointed ambassador as Kemal Atatürk was introducing radical reforms that revolutionized the country’s legal and education systems and gave meaning to Turkish identity, the collection not only documents the particular nature of his job in a time of national emancipation but also holds records of his personal impressions of the Near East and photographs that depict the romantic landscapes of 20th-century Turkey.
On March 13, 1939, MacMurrary wrote poetically to his wife Lois, who he nicknamed Loishka, about gazing at Turkey’s sublime sunsets for extended periods of time, lost in their beauty. “The purple sunset on Hussein Gazi [Hüseyingazi] is so lovely that I can’t keep my eyes indoors,” he wrote. As an avid photographer, he also wrote to his wife about the dazzling effects of a sunset’s lights on a chilly February evening:
We are getting so comfortably settled that Ankara seems a different place from what we ever [sic] known before. As I glance of [sic] from writing, there is, on the hills towards Hussein Gazi [Hüseyingazi] one of the strangest and most beautiful light effects I ever saw, with the [level?] sunset light casting the shadows of our hill onto the one beyond.
Here you can see him listed in the 1904 Princeton University yearbook…
Here’s a picture of him as Asst. Secretary of State…
And, here’s an article about his wedding and that of his daughter…
This PDF and article shared here has some great pictures and information…
The Princeton collection of his papers also looks valuable…
He published a volume 1 and 2 about China which you can buy on Amazon.
This is a copy of a letter he wrote…
And, here’s a 1925 article in Time Magazine about him…
We can also find a lot of the videos he made on YouTube. Here’s a few…
You can also find a lot more on the Princeton blogs about him including this picture…
And, here’s a picture of him saluting in 1937 as President Manuel L. Quezon arrives.
Van Antwerp Family History (and Relatives) 
