Ethan A. Hitchcock

Ethan Allen Hitchcock (September 19, 1835 – April 9, 1909) was an American politician who served under presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

Business career Hitchcock was born on September 19, 1835, in Mobile, Alabama, the son of Henry Hitchcock (1791–1839), a chief justice on the Alabama Supreme Court, and Anne Erwin Hitchcock. Henry was also the 1st Alabama Secretary of State and 1st Attorney General of Alabama. He was the brother of Henry Hitchcock, nephew of Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, grandson of Judge Samuel Hitchcock, and great-grandson of Ethan Allen.

He was in mercantile business at Saint Louis, Missouri, 1855–60, then went to China to enter a commission house, of which firm he became a partner in 1866. He was married to Margaret Dwight Collier on March 20, 1869. Ethan and Margaret Hitchcock had three daughters, Sarah, Anne and Margaret Hitchcock.

In 1872 he retired from business, in 1874 returned to the United States, and in 1874-97 was president of several manufacturing, mining and railway companies. He was recalled in 1898 to serve in first McKinley's and then his successor, Roosevelt's, Cabinet. As Secretary of the Interior, Hitchcock pursued a vigorous program for the conservation of natural resources and reorganized the administration of Native American affairs.

Hitchcock died April 9, 1909, in Washington, D.C., at the age of 73. Hitchcock was buried at the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.