— First Lady Michelle Obama, 2015 International Education Week (IEW) Letter (via exchangealumni)

historyatstate:

Imagine you were en route to Europe one hundred years ago aboard the Lusitania. The majestic ship, one of the larger passenger vessels in the world at the time, neared the Irish coastline several days after its May 1 departure from New York. What was it like to experience the tragedy first-hand?

historyatstate:

Official U.S. Participation in BIE-Sanctioned World Expos, 1851-2015
Credit: Office of the Historian via Palladio

The excitement of World Expos, often referred to as World Fairs, has long captured the imagination. While international trade exhibitions attracted attention in the early…

historyatstate:

April 1865 was an extraordinary month in the history of the Civil War. On the 9th, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war. Just days later, the nation was rocked by the news that President…

historyatstate:

For the past several months, we’ve posted brief introductions to many U.S. diplomats serving abroad as the Great War erupted in 1914. We’ve also shared some of the many stories of how these and other U.S. diplomats responded to the unprecedented demands placed upon them by the outbreak of war….

historyatstate:

The Germans neared Paris by early September 1914 and the sense of crisis grew. On September 2, U.S. Ambassador to France Myron T. Herrick visited French President Raymond Poincaré at the Elysée Palace as the Government of France prepared to remove its seat to the safety of Bordeaux. Poincaré…

historyatstate:

One of the many ways war impacted daily life for all in Paris, including those within the U.S. diplomatic community, was transportation—or lack of it. The Paris Métro closed at 7:30pm to comply with the 8pm curfew imposed in the first days of August 1914. Taxis, much in demand, became scarce and…

historyatstate:

In 1914, there were five female clerks appointed to serve the Diplomatic Service in overseas posts, out of 55 clerks stationed abroad (9%).¹ One such clerk was Ann Singleton, a woman ahead of her times. Born around 1877 in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, Singleton dreamed of seeing the world, and took up secretarial work as a means of doing so. She worked as a stenographer, typewriter, and secretary, before being appointed as a clerk in the Diplomatic Service and assigned to U.S. Embassy Paris on September 1, 1912.

Biographical Statement, Ann Singleton 
Registar of the Department of State, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1915

Singleton saved up $600 from her work at the embassy, a sum she planned to use to tour the world. She earmarked her journey to start in Fall 1914, however, the outbreak of hostilities in August quickly derailed her trip. Instead, Singleton remained in Paris for several more months, and provided much-needed assistance as the embassy’s responsibilities multiplied.

Singleton returned to the United States but found herself once again in France a few years later. When General John J. Pershing, Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), arrived in Paris on June 13, 1917, “she was one of two women waiting at the Paris train station for Pershing to arrive. The other woman was a newspaper reporter.” ² Singleton served as Pershing’s private secretary for the remainder of the war.

Upon the war’s end in November 1918, she again departed France for the United States to work and save money. Singleton finally began her much-delayed trip around the world in September 1921, departing Seattle for Honolulu and then Japan. For the next decade, Singleton traveled (and worked) the world, and gave lectures on “Circling the Globe on One’s Own.” In 1931, she returned to Washington, and took a job with the War Department, where she worked until her retirement many years later.

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1. Register of the Department of State, November 13, 1913. ↩

2. John Malloy, “Daytona Woman Was Pershing Aide,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, November 23, 1968, 47. ↩