Alvey A. Adee

Alvey Augustus Adee (November 27, 1842 – July 4, 1924) was a long-time official with the United States Department of State who served as the acting Secretary of State in 1898 during the Spanish–American War. He was the second of three senior State Department officials—the first being William Hunter and the third Wilbur J. Carr—whose overlapping careers provided continuity and good management in American foreign policy for over a century, from the administration of President Andrew Jackson until that of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Early years Adee was born at Astoria, New York, November 27, 1842, son of Amelia Kinnaird Graham and Augustus Alvey Adee, fleet surgeon in the U.S. navy. His siblings are George, Willie, William and David Graham Adee.

Adee was educated under private tutors.

Adee never married and fathered no children. He was well known for his annual summer bicycling trips through Europe, which he continued until the outbreak of the First World War, and on which he was usually accompanied by Alexander Montgomery Thackara, American consul general at Berlin and later Paris, and his wife Eleanor, daughter of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Legacy Adee is said to be a major influence on characterization of Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout according to the latter's official biographer John J. McAleer. Adee being a scholar, sleuth, gourmet, bachelor, a model of efficiency, a master of the English language is said to have inspired the characterization of Wolfe.