By Bill Thawley

Adolphus Simeon Solomons was born on Oct. 26, 1826 in New York City.   He studied at the University of the City of New York.   In 1851, Secretary of State Daniel Webster appointed him Special Bearer of Dispatches to Berlin. While working abroad, he visited a Jewish ward in a Frankfurt hospital and became inspired to establish a similar institution in New York. Upon returning home, he became a member of a committee that held a ball to raise funds to establish such a hospital in New York.  This hospital later became the Mt. Sinai Hospital.

In 1859, Solomons moved to Washington, D.C. and established the printing house of Phillip and Solomons, which held contracts for government printing and paper supply.   Thus, when President Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address,  the paper he read from was from Solomons’s firm.  Solomon also took an active part in every inauguration, from Lincoln to Taft. He also established a photographic gallery of notable figures. His company added a book department, which became the literary headquarters of General Ulysses Grant and Chief Justice Salmon Portland Chase, among other leading public figures.  Notably, Solomon’s also established the first training school for nurses in Washington.

Perhaps his most outstanding achievement was Solomon’s involvement as a co-founder of the American Red Cross.   He hosted many of the organizational meetings of the Red Cross in his home in Washington. At the initial meeting in May of 1881,  Clara Barton and Solomons drew up a constitution of the American Association of the Red Cross. Barton was elected president and Solomons vice president. With the help of Senator Conger from Ohio, Solomons also drafted a Senate Resolution endorsing the Geneva Conventions. Both he and Barton signed the constitution along with 49 others. 

Solomons ran the Red Cross from his office in Washington while Barton was out of town. On March 1, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur announced his support for the Geneva Conventions; the Senate ratified the convention on March 16, and within days, Solomons joined in issuing the first American Red Cross appeal for funds, clothing, and supplies to help the victims of the Mississippi River floods.  President Arthur appointed both Barton and Solomons to represent the United States at the first International Conference of the Red Cross in Geneva (September 1884), and Solomons was appointed by the convention as its vice president. 

Solomons worked closely with Barton, using his extensive business, political, and journalism contacts to generate publicity and raise funds for the Red Cross.  However, the two had a falling out when he opposed dealing with the czarist government and their treatment of the Russian Jews.  He sent a dispatch to the Secretary of State, citing a dispatch from London talking of impending mass expulsions of Jews from Russia and asking the Secretary to protest on behalf of the U.S. Government. Barton insisted that the Red Cross pass its relief funds through official Russian channels, which soured their relationship.  She and her supporters subsequently refused to nominate him for vice president of the Red Cross. 

Ironically, it is likely that Barton’s ill-advised dismissal of Solomons led to her own forced withdrawal from Red Cross leadership in 1904 after her management of the organization was broadly condemned. This is when Mabel Thorpe Boardman stepped in to run the American Red Cross, which will be a future topic.