S. Pinkney Tuck
1st United States Ambassador to Egypt
In office
October 10, 1946 – May 30, 1948
PresidentHarry S. Truman
Preceded byHimself (as Minister)
Succeeded byStanton Griffis
United States Minister to Egypt
In office
June 14, 1944 – October 10, 1946
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Preceded byAlexander Comstock Kirk
Succeeded byHimself (as Ambassador)
Personal details
Born
Somerville Pinkney Tuck Jr.

(1891-05-03)May 3, 1891
New Brighton, New York
DiedApril 21, 1967(1967-04-21) (aged 75)
Paris, France
Spouses
Beatrice Beck
​
​
(m. 1924; div. 1934)​
    Katherine Whitney Demme Douglas
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1936)​
    RelationsCharles Marshall (grandfather)
    William Hallam Tuck (grandfather)
    Alexander J. M. Tuck (brother)
    Children2
    Parent(s)Somerville Pinkney Tuck
    Emily Rosalie Snowden Marshall
    Alma materDartmouth College

    Somerville Pinkney Tuck Jr. (May 3, 1891 – April 21, 1967) was an American diplomat.

    Early life

    His father, Judge Somerville Pinkney Tuck

    "Kippy" Tuck was born on May 3, 1891, in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York. He was a son of Somerville Pinkney Tuck (1848–1923) and Emily Rosalie Snowden (née Marshall) Tuck (1858–1940), who died at her home in Bisterne in New Forest, England, in April 1940. His father had been presiding judge of the International Court of Egypt. His siblings were William Hallem Tuck,[1] Alexander John Marshall Tuck (who married four times),[2] and Carola Marshall (née Tuck) Mills (wife of British MP Sir John Mills).[3]

    His paternal grandparents were Margaret Sprigg Bowie (née Chew) Tuck and William Hallam Tuck, a Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals from 1851 to 1861. His maternal grandparents were Sara Rebecca Nicholls (née Snowden) Marshall (daughter of Col. Thomas Snowden) and Col. Charles Marshall of Baltimore, a Confederate Adjutant and aide-de-camp to General Robert E. Lee.[3] Among his five maternal uncles were attorney Hudson Snowden Marshall.[4]

    Tuck went to boarding school in Switzerland, Germany and the United States before attending Dartmouth College, where he was known as a bon vivant, and graduated with the class of 1913.[5]

    Career

    S. Pinkney Tuck; Cmmdr. Sabalot; Lt.-Col. Schow; Monseigneur Valerio Valeri; and Ambassador William D. Leahy, at the Hôtel du Parc in Vichy, France, January 1942

    Upon his graduation from Dartmouth, he joined the diplomatic service of the U.S. Department of State. Early in his career, in the early 1920s Tuck was the American Consul at Vladivostok.[6] In 1932, during the recess of the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva that Tuck was attending as an expert to the American delegation, he was designated first secretary of the legation at Prague, cancelling earlier plans to appoint him first secretary of the legation at Budapest.[7]

    Tuck, during World War II, was the Foreign Service Officer who served as Chargé d'affaires to Vichy France until the Vichy regime severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. on November 8, 1942.[8][9]

    After leaving that post, Tuck became the last envoy and first United States Ambassador to Egypt being appointed by President Roosevelt on May 4, 1944. He presented his credentials as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on June 14, 1944.[9] Upon the legation being raised to Embassy status, he was appointed the first Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Egypt on September 19, 1946, presenting his credentials on October 10, 1946,[lower-alpha 1] serving until he left his post on May 30, 1948.[10] Tuck was "well regarded in Cairo for his ability to speak Egyptian and Arabic fluently and for his talents as a raconteur. He went shopping in the bazaars on his own and excited comment by bargaining with merchants in their own language."[11]

    After retiring from government service, he served on the board of directors of the Suez Canal in the 1950s.[12][13]

    Personal life

    His first wife, Beatrice Beck

    In October 1924, Tuck was married to Beatrice Mitchell Beck in Washington, D.C., at St. Thomas's Church in Dupont Circle in a ceremony attended by President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.[14] Beatrice, later a friend of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, was a daughter of former U.S. Representative James M. Beck, who was at the time President Coolidge's Solicitor General. Among Tuck's ushers at the wedding were the Hon. John Francis Amherst Cecil (the first secretary of the British Embassy in Washington), at whose wedding to Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt Tuck had been an usher four months earlier; also Raymond Cox, Donald Rodgers, Cmmdr. Arthur L. Bristol, William J. Curtis, the bride's brother James M. Beck Jr., and William Hallem Tuck, his brother as best man. Before their divorce in 1934,[15] they were the parents of:

    • James Marshall Tuck (1925–2003), who married Mary Chase Nicholson, daughter of William Goldsborough Nicholson, in 1956.[13][16]
    • David Hallam Tuck (1931–2002), a stockbroker.[17]

    After their divorce, Beatrice married Snowden Andrews Fahnestock (a grandson of banker Harris C. Fahnestock) in 1936.[18] In 1936, Tuck remarried to heiress Katherine Whitney (née Demme) Douglas (1897–1981) in Paris.[19] Katherine was the former wife of First National Bank president D. Dwight Douglas.[20]

    Tuck died at the American Hospital in Paris in April 1967.[11] His widow died in 1981 in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan.[21]

    References

    Notes
    1. ↑ Tusk was commissioned during a recess of the Senate. He was recommissioned on January 13, 1947, after confirmation.[9]
    Sources
    1. ↑ "WILLIAM H. TUCK, REFUGEE OFFICIAL; Industrialist Also Was Aide to Hoover Dies at 76". The New York Times. 31 August 1966. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    2. ↑ "ALEXANDER J. TUCK DIES IN GENEVA AT 62". The New York Times. 19 March 1955. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    3. 1 2 "MRS. SOMERVILLE P. TUCK; Widow of Ex-Presiding Judge of International Court of Egypt". The New York Times. 15 April 1940. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    4. ↑ Studios, Photo By Campbell (30 May 1931). "H.S. MARSHALL DIES; FAMOUS AS LAWYER; Federal Attorney in Pre-War Days of Neutrality Had Been Ill for Several Months. AN ENEMY OF GERMAN SPIES Got 100 Indictments Against Secret Agents--Broke Up Capt. Boy-Ed Passport Plot. Eulogized by G. G. Battle. Of Famous Ancestry. Had Important Litigation. His Work Against Spies". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    5. ↑ Mayers, David (2013). FDR's Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis: From the Rise of Hitler to the End of World War II. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–154. ISBN 978-1-107-03126-5. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    6. ↑ "American Consul leaves Vladivostok". The Boston Globe. May 18, 1923. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
    7. ↑ TIMES, Special to THE NEW YORK (31 July 1932). "GENEVA ATTACHES GO TO OTHER POSTS; S. Pinkney Tuck Is Appointed Secretary at Prague, Samuel Reber at Brussels". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    8. ↑ Bauer, Yehuda (1981), American Jewry and the Holocaust: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945, Wayne State University Press, p. 176, ISBN 978-0-8143-1672-6
    9. 1 2 3 "Somerville Pinkney Tuck Jr. - People - Department History - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    10. ↑ Louis, William Roger (1986), The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism, Oxford University Press, p. 242, ISBN 978-0-19-822960-5
    11. 1 2 "S. PINKNEY TUCK, DIPLOMAT, DEAD; First Envoy to Egypt, 75-- On Board of Suez Canal". The New York Times. 1967-04-23. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
    12. ↑ "The Suez Canal". Life. October 22, 1951. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
    13. 1 2 Rossi, Special to The New York Times Charles (18 July 1956). "MARY NICHOLSON WILL BE MARRIED; Baltimore Girl, an Alumna of Vassar, Fiancee of James M. Tuck, Princeton Graduate Ottaway--Doyle". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    14. ↑ TIMES, Special to THE NEW YORK (26 October 1924). "MISS BEATRICE BECK. BRIDE OF S. P. TUCK JR.; President and Mrs. Coolidge at the Wedding of Daughter of Solicitor General". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
    15. ↑ TIMES, Special to THE NEW YORK (29 March 1934). "Wife to Sue S.P. Tuck". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    16. ↑ Bachrach, Special to The New York Times Bradford (14 October 1956). "MARY NICHOLSON, JAMES TUCK WED; Bride Attended by Eight at Marriage in Baltimore to Son of Ex-Envoy to Egypt". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    17. ↑ "Paid Notice: Deaths TUCK, DAVID HALLAM". The New York Times. 20 January 2002. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    18. ↑ TIMES, Special to THE NEW YORK (30 April 1936). "MRS. BEATRICE TUCK IS BRIDE AT CAPITAL; Daughter of Late James M. Beck Is Married to Col. Snowden Andrew Fahnestock". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
    19. ↑ Wilkins, Warde (October 1936). "Class of 1913". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine | the Complete Archive. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    20. ↑ TIMES, Wireless to THE NEW YORK (30 July 1936). "MRS. K. W. D. DOUGLAS BRIDE OF DIPLOMAT; Married in Paris to S. Pinkney Tuck, First Secretary of United States Embassy". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
    21. ↑ "Katherine Tuck, 84, of Grosse Pointe". Detroit Free Press. 9 October 1981. p. 15. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
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