NOTABLE PEOPLE
Lithgow Osborne
Born 1892, Died 1980
From his congressional biography:
From The Osborne Family Inventory text ©1971 by Syracuse University Libraries:
Osborne, Lithgow (1892-1980) of Auburn, Cayuga County, N.Y. Son of Thomas Mott Osborne. Born in Auburn, Cayuga County, N.Y., April 2, 1892. Democrat. Candidate for New York state senate 42nd District, 1924; delegate to Democratic National Convention from New York, 1928; candidate for U.S. Representative from New York 36th District, 1932; delegate to New York state constitutional convention, 1938; U.S. Ambassador to Norway, 1944-46.
History
Lithgow Osborne (b. Apr. 2, 1892) was the third son of Thomas Mott Osborne. When he was in the middle of his senior year at Harvard, Joseph C. Grew snapped him up for an assignment in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. That was 1914 . . .
As private secretary to Ambassador James W. Gerard, and later as third secretary of the embassy, Lithgow Osborne was plunged into the diplomatic and social life of wartime Germany. . . .
Shortly before President Wilson broke relations with Germany, Osborne was transferred to the American Legation in Havana. Because of his familiarity with European affairs he was soon returned to the Continent as Secretary of the American Legation in Copenhagen.
There he met Countess Lillie Raben-Levetzau, whom he married. They had three sons: Richard, Lithgow Devens, and Frederick Raben-Levetzau.
After the Paris Peace Conference Osborne returned to Washington, D.C. He worked within the State Department for a few years but resigned . . . In 1922 he became the vice-president and editorial writer of the Auburn Citizen-Advertiser. A decade later he was back in government when Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed him Commissioner of Conservation. After another ten years he departed Albany for Washington and a desk in the office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Late in the war, when Lehman was shaping the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Osborne joined his staff. A little later, President Roosevelt made Osborne Ambassador to Norway, a post he held until May, 1946.
For several years after his return from Oslo Lithgow Osborne was chairman of the board of trustees for the American Scandinavian Foundation.
In 1954 he helped draft the original Declaration of Atlantic Unity, which was both a statement of purpose and an agency designed to bolster the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A second Declaration of Atlantic Unity (1962) was sponsored by 270 American and European statesmen, some of whose correspondence is present in the collection.
