U.S. Secretary of State. Born in Salem, Indiana, the son of Helen Leonard and Dr. Charles Hay. He attended Concordia College (present day Illinois State University) and received a master's degree from Brown in 1858. He studied law in in Springfield, and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1861. He was selected by President Abraham Lincoln as a private secretary. In April 1865, the president appointed Hay secretary of the U.S. legation at Paris, he served until 1867, then at Vienna from 1867 to 1869, and at Madrid from 1869 to 1870. After his return to the United States, he resigned from government service and worked for five years an editorial writer with the 'New York Tribune.' He returned to public service in 1896 when President William McKinley appointed him Ambassador to Great Britain. He was then offered the position of Secretary of State in 1898. Under his tenure, he was a proponent of increased trade with the so-called Open Door policy, he worked to encourage stability in China. After the assassination of the President, he remained in office under President Theodore Roosevelt and helped secure a treaty that allowed the United States to construct and defend the Panama Canal, and he secured the settlement of the Alaska-Canada boundary. The summer of 1901 saw the death of his son Adelbert, something Hay never really recovered from. In 1904, Roosevelt asked him to remain in office for his second term. By inauguration day in March 1905, Hay was ill, and he went to Europe to take cures and see specialists. He reported back to Washington in June before traveling to his home in New Hampshire where he died within the week due to complications from heart disease. He also was noted as a writer, and published 'Pike County Ballads' (1871), the extensive biography, 'Abraham Lincoln: A History' (10 vols, 1890) with John G. Nicolay, Lincoln's 'Complete Works' (1894), and a novel, 'The Bread-Winners' (1883).