(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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lawyer manufacturer politician statesman
Sharp was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, United States on March 14, 1859. He was the son of George Snider and Mahala (Graves) Sharp of Mount Gilead, Ohio, and the great-grandson of John Sharp who emigrated from England and settled in Frederick, Maryland, at the end of the eighteenth century.
He graduated from the high school at Elyria, Ohio, and, in 1881, from the law department of the University of Michigan.
Like his father and grandfather, he first turned to journalism and edited a paper at Fargo, but he soon returned to Elyria and the bar, where at the age of twenty-five he was elected as a Democrat to the office of prosecuting attorney.
However, the law was losing its attractions, so he refused a renomination and turned to manufacturing. He made a fortune in pig-iron, chemicals, and charcoal, and he built the large Lake Superior Iron and Chemical Company.
He was a Cleveland elector in 1892, opposed Bryan and free silver in 1896, was nominated for Congress by the Democrats in 1900, was elected to that body in 1908, and reelected for two succeeding terms by increasing majorities.
As he was against the commercial treaty of 1832 with Russia, he could not become ambassador to Russia some months later, when offered that post by President Wilson.
Appointed ambassador to France, to succeed Myron T. Herrick, on June 19, 1914, he resigned from the House on July 23 and arrived in France in early September, while the Germans were threatening Paris and the French government was at Bordeaux. The American embassy, then representing German interests, remained at Paris. Because of the crisis Herrick remained at his post, and Sharp stayed in Paris unofficially until November 28, when he was instructed to assume his duties.
He spent four and a half useful years in Paris, conducting the business of the embassy, visiting German prison camps and Allied, and later American, army encampments, keeping his eye on developments in aviation, which always interested him, directing or encouraging relief work of various kinds, and ironing out the difficulties that arose between his own and the French governments.
Although a novice at diplomacy when appointed, he remained at his post until April 14, 1919. An address he made at the presentation of a collection of French drawings and autographs to the American people was published in Le Secours Americain en France (1915), and after his death was published The War Memoirs of William Graves Sharp (1931).
In 1919 he returned to Elyria, where he died.
William Graves Sharp was a three-term congressman, he introduced a pioneer air mail bill. Being appointed the Ambassador to France, he became the first American dean of the diplomatic corps at Paris. He made a number of protests to the French authorities against the drafting of naturalized American citizens of French birth into the French army. His most famous sppech was published in Le Secours Americain en France (1915).
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
He supported the income tax and a substantial duty on the raw wool in which his own state was interested. He spoke vigorously in favor of denouncing the commercial treaty of 1832 with Russia because of Russian discriminations against Jewish-American citizens.
In 1895 he was married to Hallie M. Clough. They had five children.
