Attorney General: Richard Olney
Richard Olney was born in Oxford, was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on September 15, 1835. He attended Leicester Academy in Worcester County, graduated from Brown University in 1856, and received his Bachelor of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1858. Olney was admitted to the bar in 1859 and entered the office of Judge Benjamin F. Thomas of Boston. He served briefly as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1874. Between 1876 and 1879, Olney successfully reorganized the financially distressed Eastern Railroad Company of Massachusetts and, in the process, became the firm’s general counsel and joined its board of directors. In 1884, when the Boston and Maine Railroad leased the Eastern, he became that company’s attorney and moved to its board of directors. In 1889, Olney became the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad’s general counsel and a member of its board.
President Grover Cleveland appointed Olney as Attorney General of the United States on March 6, 1893. Olney held that office until resigning in early June 1895 to accept appointment as Secretary of State of the United States. Leaving public service in 1897, he practiced law privately until 1908. He died in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 8, 1917.
Hubert Vos was born in 1855 in Maastricht, Holland, and studied in Rome, Paris, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He established a studio in London in 1887 in which he specialized in portraiture. He also opened two art schools. Vos emigrated from England to the United States in 1892 and became a naturalized citizen in 1898. His portrait of Attorney General Olney was painted in 1895. Hubert Vos died in 1935.