James B. Eustis

James Biddle Eustis (August 27, 1834 – September 9, 1899)

He was elected a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives prior to the Reconstruction acts, and was one of the committee sent to Washington, D.C. to confer with President Andrew Johnson on Louisiana affairs. He was again a member of the State house of representatives in 1872, and was a member of the Louisiana Senate from 1874 to 1878. Eustis served from January 12, 1876, to March 3, 1879; he was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection, and was professor of civil law at the Tulane University Law School from 1877 to 1884, then called the University of Louisiana. He was again elected to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1885, to March 3, 1891; he was not a candidate for reelection, and practiced law in Washington, D.C., in 1891.

If his lot is to continue to be one of inferiority, rather than appeal to the political favoritism of the federal government, or to the partisan sympathies of Northern philanthropists, as he has done in the past, he should rely implicitly upon the magnanimity of his white fellow-citizens of the South, to treat him with the justice and generosity due to his unfortunate condition.

From 1893 to 1897 he was ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to France, and then settled in New York City. a daughter of Henry Sullivan Buckner, a cotton broker who built a mansion at 1410 Jackson Avenue in New Orleans in 1856, and Catharine (née Allan) Buckner. Ellen was an aunt to Mortimer N. Buckner, president and chairman of the New York Trust Company. Together, James and Ellen were the parents of:

William A. Eustis (1860–1863), who died young. Marie Clarice Eustis (1866–1956), who married George Peabody Eustis Corcoran (1864–1936) in 1887. They divorced and she married pianist Josef Hofmann in 1905. James Biddle Eustis Jr. (1872–1915), who married Nina Floyd Crosby (1881–1966) Celestine Eustis (1877–1947), who married Charles Bohlen (1866–1936) in 1902.

Eustis died in Newport, Rhode Island on September 9, 1899. He was interred at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a member of The Boston Club of New Orleans.

Descendants Through his daughter Celestine, he was posthumously a grandfather of diplomat Charles Bohlen (1904–1974), who served as the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Philippines and France.