John W. Foster

John Watson Foster (March 2, 1836 – November 15, 1917) was an American general, journalist and diplomat.
Born in Pike County, Indiana, and raised in Evansville, he was a lawyer. During the American Civil War, he was a general officer for the Union. The Civil war ended in 1865. Between 1865 and 1869, Foster worked as a journalist for the "Evansville Daily Journal". After that, he was the U.S. Minister to Mexico (1873-1880), Russia (1880-1881) and Spain (1883-1885). He was U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison from 1892-1893. In 1895, he helped the Qing Dynasty in drafting the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895. He worked for the Chinese as a legal consultant and commissioner.
His grandchildren included John Foster Dulles, who also became a U.S. Secretary of State, Allen Welsh Dulles, a Director of Central Intelligence, and Eleanor Lansing Dulles, economist and diplomat. He is also the great-grandfather of the Catholic theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles.