John Dyneley Prince

John Dyneley Prince (April 17, 1868 – October 11, 1945) was an American linguist, diplomat, and politician. He was a professor at New York University and Columbia University, minister to Denmark and Yugoslavia, and leader of both houses of the New Jersey Legislature.

Early life Prince was born in New York City in 1868, the son of John Dyneley Prince (1843–1883) and Anna Maria (née Morris) Prince (1847–1904). His paternal grandparents were John Dyneley Prince and Mary (née Travers) Prince. His maternal grandparents were Thomas H. Morris and Mary (née Johnson) Morris (a daughter of Reverdy Johnson, a U.S. Senator from Maryland who also served as United States Attorney General). After the death of his father in 1883, his mother remarried to Dr. Alfred Lebbeus Loomis, who served as president of the Association of American Physicians. His step brother was Henry Patterson Loomis. Prince had a strong interest in foreign languages as a child, acquiring basic skills in speaking the Romani and Shelta languages by the age of 12, after reading Charles Godfrey Leland's ethnographic accounts of the Gypsies. As retold in his 1939 memoir Fragments from Babel, he ran away with another boy from their families in New York to a Gypsy camp near Newark, New Jersey, where they spent three days and were accepted because of his proficiency in their language. He also learned Welsh and Turkish in his youth.

Prince was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1913.

Political career Prince entered New Jersey politics, using his language skills to reach out to various ethnic groups of constituents in their native tongues. He was a Republican member of the New Jersey General Assembly from 1906 to 1909, serving as Speaker of the Assembly in his final year. From 1910 to 1913 he served in the New Jersey Senate representing Passaic County, and was President of the Senate in 1912, in which role he served as Acting Governor while Governor Woodrow Wilson was out of state.

Diplomatic career Prince served as president of the New Jersey Civil Service Commission from 1917 to 1921, when he was chosen by Warren G. Harding to be Minister to Denmark. In 1926, Calvin Coolidge appointed him Minister to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. He continued to serve as ambassador after the nation was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. He served until 1932, after which time he returned to his professorship at Columbia, retiring in 1937. In 1891, they moved to Ringwood Manor in Ringwood in Passaic County, New Jersey. Their only child, John Dyneley Prince, Jr., was born that year.