George B. Cortelyou
Former United States Postmaster General
Education
- BA degree - Westfield Normal School
- law degrees - George Washington University and Georgetown University
- mastering shorthand -
Overview
George Bruce Cortelyou was an American cabinet secretary of the early twentieth century. He served in various capacities in the presidential administrations of Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Born in New York City, Cortelyou worked for the United States Post Office Department and came to the attention of Postmaster General Wilson S. Bissell. On Bissell's recommendation, President Cleveland hired Cortelyou as his chief clerk. On Cleveland's recommendation, McKinley hired Cortelyou as his personal secretary. After the assassination of William McKinley, Roosevelt asked Cortelyou to lead an effort to reorganize the White House.
Impressed with Cortelyou's performance, Roosevelt appointed him United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor in 1903. He left this position in 1904 to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, and in 1905 he also served as Postmaster General. He left both positions to become the United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1907. In this position, he worked to keep the economy stable during the Panic of 1907. After Roosevelt left office in 1909, Cortelyou became president of the Consolidated Gas Company. He died in 1940.
Early career :
In 1891 he obtained a position as secretary to the chief postal inspector of New York. The following year, a promotion led to a position as secretary to the Fourth Assistant Postmaster General in Washington, D.C. In 1895, President Grover Cleveland hired Cortelyou as his chief clerk on the recommendation of Postmaster General Wilson S. Bissell. Cleveland recommended him as personal secretary to his successor, William McKinley. Cortelyou was working to improve the efficiency of the office when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. He was the third president to be assassinated.
McKinley was greeting visitors at the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, when he was shot twice at close range by lone assassin Leon Czolgosz, a twenty-eight-year-old anarchist. As McKinley collapsed, he was caught and supported by his aides, including Cortelyou. As he was held in their arms, he whispered, "My wife... be careful, Cortelyou, how you tell her. Oh, be careful." He died eight days later at the age of fifty-eight.
After succeeding McKinley as president, Theodore Roosevelt charged Cortelyou with transforming the White House into a more professional organization. Cortelyou developed procedures and rules that guided White House protocol and established processes for which there had been only personal prerogative. Cortelyou is also credited with establishing an improved line of communication between the President's office and the press; he provided reporters with their own work space, briefed journalists on major news events, and distributed press releases. Cortelyou is credited with establishing the first systematic collection of press clippings for a sitting president to review. The "Current Clippings" were the first attempt by a president to gauge public opinion through the media. Cortelyou selected the articles objectively, a practice not consistently followed by his successors.
Early Life
Cortelyou was born in New York City to Rose and Peter Crolius Cortelyou, Jr. He was a member of an old New Netherlandish family whose immigrant ancestor, Jacques Cortelyou, arrived in 1652. He was educated in the public schools of Brooklyn, at Nazareth Hall Military Academy in Pennsylvania, and at Hempstead Institute on Long Island.
At the age of 20, Cortelyou received a BA degree from Westfield Normal School, now Westfield State University, a teachers' college in Westfield, Massachusetts. He earned law degrees from George Washington University and Georgetown University. He was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity while at George Washington University. Cortelyou then began teaching, later taking a stenography course and mastering shorthand. On September 15, 1888, Cortelyou married the former Lily Morris Hinds, with whom he had five children.
Career
- United States - Former Postmaster General