When my great grandfather James M Dobbs was appointed to a consul generalship in South America at the start of the 2nd Cleveland Administration, his name appeared in newspapers all over the United States. In the majority of those appearances, it was one item in a list of other men who had been appointed to an office that April in 1893. Most of the newspapers in his home state of Georgia gave glowing reports, and there was only one local newspaper that printed something negative about James. and in that report, it was implied that he had gotten his job because he was married to a world famous concert pianist.

Today, while I was digging around at newspaperarchive dot com, I found another negative report about my great-grandpa. This time, he was mocked because he was the scion of an old Southern family, who knew how to read and write. The writer specifically mocks him for “having a grandfather,” In other words, being from an old family.

According to this article, James may have been recruited for the State Department while he was in Panama in the 1880s.

The newspaper mentions two Secretaries of State: Thomas F. Bayard, a Democrat from Delaware, who became Cleveland’s Secretary of State during his first Administration in the 1880s, and Walter Quintin Gresham, who was Cleveland’s Secretary of State during the second Administration. Gresham was a Republican from Indiana who was appointed by Cleveland as bipartisan gesture.

Here’s the item that appeared in the Hillsdale Standard, 11 April 1893, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA

C.M. Barre’s Successor

“On Tuesday last, James M Dobbs of Georgia was appointed consul at Valparaiso Chile to succeed Consul CM Barre of this city. A writer from Washington has the following to say of the new appointee:

” James M Dobbs of Georgia a young man of 28 is appointed consul at Valparaiso Chile the country with which the United States recently had much difficulty. All that can be learned of his record is that he is of an old family. It was said of Bayard when he was Secretary of State that he searched the old families of the South and when he found a young man who could read and write and had a grandfather that young man was appointed. It has not been supposed that Secretary Gresham, even while acting as clerk for Cleveland would adopt for the motto of the State Department the principal that any young ex Confederate who had a grandfather should have an office.”