Amédée Bartholdi

Philippe-Amédée Bartholdi was born in Paris in 1830 and pursued a diplomatic career that included Turin and St Petersburg before Washington. A study of the Bartholdi family distinguishes him from the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. Amédée nevertheless participated in the Statue of Liberty project as a subscriber to its fundraising appeal in 1875. ¹

In Washington he continued negotiations over international standards of measurement. His November 1874 letter to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish followed an earlier initiative by Noailles and sought American participation in a Paris diplomatic conference to establish arrangements for the custody and use of international metre and kilogram standards. ²

Bartholdi was also selected in July 1874 to serve as umpire for the American-Spanish commission dealing with claims arising from the Cuban insurrection. Fish asked the American minister in Paris to obtain French permission for him to accept. Bartholdi died in 1904. ^{3, 1}