U.S. Consul Among the Dead

An American consul, Arthur S. Cheney, and his wife die in the midst of an “earthquake disaster”.

Arthur S. Cheney and Wife among earthquake victims. Washington December 30 – That Arthur S. Cheney, American Consul at Messina, Sicily, and his wife lost their lives in the earthquake disaster which devastated that city indicated by an official dispatch received by the state department from Stuart Lupton the American vice Consul at Messina. The following dispatch came via Malta, Maltese Islands in the Mediterranean, being received there by wireless from Messina by Consul William H. Gale and transmitted to him by the state department: “The Messina consulate destroyed, and consul and his wife supposed to be dead”. Consul Gale is forwarding the dispatch by cable added that Lupton is suppose to have escaped.

“U.S. Consul Among the Dead,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed March 21, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1846.