Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 7).djvu/260

to the legation at Washington. After his father's retirement in 1875 he was made tliird secretary of the legation; this position he held until 1881, when he was sent to Tlie Hague as second secre- tary, he remained in Holland from 1883 until 1885, when he was recalled to Madrid to accept a position in the foreign otlice there, specially con- nected with commercial affairs and consulates. In a short time he was sent to Cairo as minister resi- dent in Egypt, was then transferred to Brazil, and then again" recalled. On 14 Feb., 1898, after the resignation of Enrique Dupuy de Lome (q. v.) from tlie embassy at Washington, Polo was ap- pointed to succeed him. He arrived at New Vork on 9 March following, and, though affairs between Spain and the United States were near a critical point, he expressed great hopes that there would be a peaceable settlement of the points at issue. He was received by the secretary of state on 11 March, and presented to the president on the day following. The two countries drifted rapidly toward war, however, and on 20 April, 1898, he asked for his passports. With his legation he went to Canada, and his presence there caused not a few protests on the part of the American people. He sailed from Quebec on 21 Jlay, 1898, as the re- sult, it is believed, of an intimation from the Brit- ish government that his remaining in Canada, in the part he had chosen to play, was not proper. On liis return to Spain he accepted the position of under-secretary to the foreign office at Jladrid.

PONTGIRAUD, Charles Albert de Moré (pon-ge-bo), comte de More and chevalier de Pont- gibaud. b. in Pontgibaud, Auvergne, 21 April, 1758; d. in Paris in 1837. He was the younger son of an old family. His father was Cesar de More Chaliers, comte de Pontgibaud; his mother, whose maiden name was Marie Charlotte de Salaberry, died while he was very young. His father married again later, and left the family mainly to the care of his grandmother until he was sixteen, when he was sent to college in Paris, residing at the house of an uncle. Here he spent two years, but on 19 Feb., 1775, he was confined, at the instance of his step-mother, by a lettre de cachet, in the prison of Pierre-en-Cize. near Lyons, charged with being " of a fierce and violent character and refusing to do work of any kind." He protests mildly and good-humoredly against this in liis " Memoirs." The young fellow escaped from the prison in 1777 by tunnelling his way through the wall. He made his peace with his father, who refused to see him, however, but who agreed to his proposal to join Lafayette in service in the United States, agreeing to allow him 100 louis a year, and to give him 2,000 crowns when he embarked for America. He took passage at Nantes on the " Are-en-Ciel," and after a passage of sixty-seven days the ship ran aground in Chesapeake bay just under the guns of the Brit- ish sixty-four gun " Isis." Pontgiliaud escaped, made his way to Williamsburg, and received a passport from Jefferson to Valley Forge, where Lafayette was encamped. After a journey of great hardship he succeeded in reaching Lafayette, who enlisted him as a volunteer, 5 Nov., 1777, and appointed him an aide-de-camp, with rank of ma- jor. He accompanied Lafayette on the proposed expedition against Canada in January, 1778, served with himat Monmouth and Newport, and returned to France with him and Mauduit Duplessison the " Alliance" in January, 1779. He visited his father and founil himself restored to his good graces. In April he received from the king a commission as capitaine de remplacement, and the price of the brevet, 7,000 francs, was remitted. He returned to the United States, sailing from Lorient on the "Alliance" under command of the former cap- tain, Landais, who went mad on the voyage. Pont- gibaud rejoined the army immediately, and took part in the subsequent operations until the siege of Yorktown. In the autumn of 1781 he returned to France on the " Ariel, a frigate captured by d'Estaing and commanded by Pontgibaud's friend, chevalier de Capellis. After peace was declared he was made a member of the order of Cincinnati. His life between the time of his service in Amer- ica and the beginning of the French revolution was passed much in the same way as that of any young Frenchman of good family. At the out- break of the revolution his family emigrated to Switzerland. With his brother he took part in the disastrous campaign of the duke of Brunswick, and then settled down with the family to make their living as best they could. He heard that the United States was at that time paying off, with interest, the sums due to officers that had served in the Revolution. Accordingly, he embarked from Hamburg for Philadelphia, and upon his arrival there succeeded in getting about 50,000 francs back pay. He returned to Hamburg, smuggling himself through Antwerp into Paris, and went thence to Trieste, where his brother luul founded a mercan- tile house. After the restoration he returned to France, and si)ent the remainder of his days quietly in Paris. He published his recollections as "Memoires du Comte de JI " in 1828. the book having an added interest as one of those printed by Balzac during his brief life as a printer. The memoirs were translated into English, and edited by Robert B. Douglas, with the title "A French Volunteer of the War of Independence (the Chevalier de Pontgibaud) " (Paris, 1897).

POOL, Maria Louise, author, b. in Rockland, Mass., 20 Aug., 1841 ; d. there, 19 May, 1898. She attended the public school of the town (then East Arlington), and later taught school for two years. She oc- casionally contrib- uted to the maga- zines and papers, but did not come into notice as an author until the publica- tion, in 1887, of her first book, " A Va- cation in a Buggy." This was followed by " Tenting at Stony Beach " (1888), a pleasant account of a vacation spent on the Massachusetts coast. Among Miss Pool's eighteen umes are " Dally "

(New York, 1891):

"Roweny in Boston" (1892): "Mrs. Keats Brad- ford": "Katharine North" (1893): "The Two Salomes": "Out of Step" (1894): "Against Hu- man Nature" (1895); " Mrs. Gerald" (1896): "In the First Person "; "Boss and other Dogs"; "A Golden Sorrow " (1898 : completed a few weeks be- fore her death): and "The Malvon F'arm " (1899).

POORE. Henry Rankin, artist, b. in Newark, N. J., 21 Jliirch. 1859. He is a son of Rev. Daniel W. Poore (vol. v.. p. (iO), and was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied art at the National academy and the Pennsylvania acad- emy, also under Peter Jloran and with Luminals