George Washington Montgomery
George Washington Montgomery, or Jorge Montgomery (Alicante, Spain, 1804 - Washington D.C., June 5, 1841) was an American Spanish-born writer, translator and diplomat.[1]
His father was an Irishman businessman, John Montgomery; his mother was perhaps a Spaniard. His father had lived in Boston and had settled in Alicante, where he was a U.S. consul. George spent his childhood in England, and studied Humanities in Exeter. Then he had some minor function in U.S. embassy at Madrid; afterwards he was secretary of Carlos Martinez de Irujo y Tacón, former Spanish minister to the United States from 1796 to 1807, married with an American lady, Sarah Maria Theresa McKean,[2] with whom George held a long friendship. Thanks to U.S. minister Alexander Hill Everett, Washington Irving met his namesake in the Madrid tertulia of Mrs. Sarah McKean, a widow by then (1826), and the friendship between the two was never interrupted. Montgomery held various diplomatic positions: U.S. consul in San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1835–38; Tampico, 1840–41. He is entombed at Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C. in the Van Ness Mausoleum.[3][4]
As a writer and translator, he wrote adaptations of some minor works of Washington Irving in Tareas de un solitario,[5] and the first Spanish translation of A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada by this author.[6] In 1832, published El bastardo de Castilla, «historical novel, chivalrous, original» about the romantic medieval hero Bernardo del Carpio.[7] In 1839, Narrative of a journey to Guatemala, in Central America, in 1838, an interesting travelogue about these regions, was published in New York.[8]
References
[edit]- ^ The Political Graveyard.com
- ^ Thomas McKean daughter by his second wife, Sarah Armitage.
- ^ The Political Graveyard.com
- ^ "Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown, D.C. (Van Ness) - Lot 173 East (Van Ness Mausoleum)" (PDF). oakhillcemeterydc.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-03-02. Retrieved 2022-08-14.
- ^ Tareas de un solitario, o nueva colección de novelas, Madrid: Imprenta Espinosa, 1829
- ^ Crónica de la conquista de Granada. Escrita en inglés por Mr. Washington Irving. Tr. al castellano por Don Jorge W. Montgomery ..., Madrid: Impr. de I. Sancha, 1831.
- ^ El bastardo de Castilla. Novela historica, caballeresca, original, por don Jorge Montgomery .., Madrid: Imprenta de I. Sancha, 1832.
- ^ Narrative of a journey to Guatemala, in Central America, in 1838 / by G.W. Montgomery. New York : Wiley & Putnam, 1839.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- 1804 births
- 1841 deaths
- Writers from Alicante
- American Hispanists
- American Latinists
- Spanish diplomats
- Spanish translators
- 19th-century American diplomats
- 19th-century American translators
- 19th-century American writers
- 19th-century Spanish writers
- English–Spanish translators
- American people of Irish descent
- Spanish emigrants to the United States
- Burials at Oak Hill Cemetery (Washington, D.C.)