Bainbridge Colby, was the Secretary of State during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency and promoted what was to become the Good Neighbor Policy. According to historians.org, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the policy its name in March 1933, when he stated in his first inaugural address. The policy rests, then, on the simple principles that nations should not intervene in the affairs of other nations and that their relations should be to the benefit of both. To understand how revolutionary this policy is, we must turn to the not-so-distant past. Only a few years ago the United States was not considered a good neighbor by Latin America. Instead, it was called the “Yankee Colossus of the North,” the bad boy of the Western World, who grabbed territory from its weaker neighbors and followed a policy of “dollar diplomacy.”

Colby retired to Bemus Point and died there in 1950.

According to Bob Terreberry, Bemus Point Historical Society co-president, Colby was a charismatic speaker, and very active. As a lawyer, he at one time, worked for the Woodrow Wilson law firm and one of his clients was Mark Twain. When he died, his second wife, Anne von Ahlstrand Ely, lived on in their home on Route 430. When she died in 1963 their family gave New York State land that was used with land from other local residents to create Long Point.

Recently Terreberry came across three rather large leather presentation albums pertaining to Colby. The albums contain pictures and other artifacts that will be sent to the Library of Congress for preservation.

Bainbridge Colby

“At our Bemus Point Historical Society museum we have three huge photograph albums of a visit of his to Motevideo, Uruguay in 1920. These 150, 11-by-19, pictures are of the official buildings, churches, streets, parks, etc. of Montevideo. We are preparing to send these three albums to the Library of Congress to be placed with the Bainbridge Colby collection they currently oversee. … Historically they were given to visiting dignitaries by a host country as a commemoration of the visit,” Terreberry said.

“It’s four huge albums of 150 to 200 pictures. And so we we have them, but they really should be elsewhere. I mean, they don’t represent Colby’s, time in Bemis. And so they should be at the Library of Congress and the Library of Congress is ecstatic about getting these,” Terreberry added.

How the BPHS acquired the albums may seem a bit odd and random. Terreberry said, Don Jordan, a former funeral director and historian had possession of them and in 1997, gave the albums to the Bemus Point Library because he thought they should be in Bemus Point. Terreberry said the albums were not seen for about 10 to 12 years, and one day Cherrie Clark, Ellery Town Historian, and Terrerberry found them in a basket, and the process was started to get them to the Library of Congress.

The Bemus Point Historical Society was formed in 1997. State Chartered Education Corporation. A museum has been established in the original Village Hall on Alburtus Avenue and is currently open July and August Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and by appointment.

A TIMELINE OF COLBY’S LIFE

Submitted photo The gravestone of Bainbridge Colby in Bemus Point Cemetery. He retired to Bemus Point and died there in 1950.

1869, Dec. 22: Born, St. Louis, Miss.

1890: A.B., Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

1890 – 1892: Attended Columbia Law School and New York Law School, New York.

1892: Admitted to New York State bar and began his own law practice in New York.

1895: Married Nathalie Sedgwick (he divorced her in 1929).

1901 – 1902: Member, New York State Assembly, 29th District.

1912: Assisted in organizing the Progressive Party and supported the presidential candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt.

1914: Progressive Party nominee for United States Senate.

1916: Progressive Party nominee for United States Senate Counsel for a joint committee of the New York. legislature in an investigation of public utility commissions and public service corporations.

1917: Special assistant to the United States Attorney General in antitrust proceedings Member, American Mission to Inter-Allied Conference, Paris, France.

1917 – 1919: Appointed to the United States Shipping Board, becoming trustee and vice president of the board’s Emergency Fleet Corp.

1920 – 1921: He was Secretary of state.

1921 – 1923: Practiced law in partnership with Woodrow Wilson.

1923 – 1936: Established his own law practice; retired from the practice of law.

1929: Married Anne von Ahlstrand Ely (she died 1963).

1950, April 11: He died in Bemus Point.

Today the BPHS will display and hold a presentation about these albums at the Lawson Boat Museum, 73 Lakeside Drive, Bemus Point, prior to the albums being sent to the Library of Congress.