
DODD
GENEALOGY
LINE
William
Edward
Dodd, Jr.
(1905 - 1952)
William
Edward
Dodd, Sr.
(1869 - 1940)
John
Daniel
Dodd
(1848 - 1941)
John
Dodd
(1812 - 1896)
Dempsey
Dodd
(1765 - 1851)
William
Dodd
(1738 - 1813)
David
Dodd
(1690 - 1746)
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FAMILY
NAMES
WEEKS:
Cobb
Van
Weeks
HARRELL:
Harrell
King
EASON:
Avera
Eason
Liles
Medlin
GRISWOLD:
Dodd
Exum
Griswold
Hocutt
O'Neil
Tomlinson
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William
"Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. |
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Born: 08 Aug 1905, Hanover County, VA
Died: 18 Oct 1952, San Francisco, California
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William "Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. was the first child born
to
Dr. Willaim Edward Dodd, Sr. and Martha "Mattie" Ida
Johns. Bill was born 08 Aug 1905 in Hanover County,
Virginia. |
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"Bill" Dodd had one sibling, a sister named
Martha Eccles Dodd. |
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Children of William Edward Dodd, Sr. and Martha Ida
Johns |
Name |
Birth |
Death |
Spouse |
William "Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. |
08 Aug 1905
Hanover Co, VA |
18 Oct 1952
San Francisco, CA |
1) Audrey Ruth
Koolish
2) Katherine Hubbard |
Martha Eccles Dodd |
08 Oct 1908
Hanover Co, VA |
10 Aug 1990
Prague, Czech Republic |
1) George Barrett
Roberts
2) Alfred Kaufman Stern |
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William "Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. |
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The 1910 Census shows William and Martha/Mattie Dodd
living in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Son William "Bill"
Edgar Dodd, Jr. was 4 years old and daughter Martha
Eccles Dodd was one year old. |
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1910 Chicago, Cook County,
IL, Census |
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Name |
Relation |
Personal Description |
Birth |
Occupation |
Last |
First |
Sex |
Race |
Age |
S/M |
Years
Married |
Children |
Self |
Father |
Mother |
Occ. |
Trade |
Born |
Living |
Dodd |
William E. |
Head |
M |
W |
40 |
M |
5 |
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NC |
NC |
NC |
Teacher |
University |
------ |
Martha J. |
Wife |
F |
W |
34 |
M |
5 |
2 |
2 |
NC |
NC |
NC |
None |
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William E. |
Son |
M |
W |
4 |
S |
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VA |
NC |
NC |
None |
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Martha E. |
Daughter |
F |
W |
1 |
S |
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VA |
NC |
NC |
None |
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Carr |
Nora |
Servant |
F |
W |
23 |
S |
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Ireland |
Ireland |
Ireland |
Cook |
Private Family |
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The 1920 Census shows the Dodd family still living in Chicago,
Cook County, IL. William "Bill" Jr. was 14 and daughter
Martha was 11. |
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1920 Chicago, Cook County,
IL, Census |
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Name |
Relation |
Home |
Personal Description |
Education |
Birth |
Occupation |
Last |
First |
O/R |
F/M |
Sex |
Race |
Age |
S/M |
Attend
School
in 1919 |
Able
to
Read |
Able
to
Write |
Self |
Father |
Mother |
Occ. |
Trade |
Dodd |
Wm. E. |
Head |
O |
F |
M |
W |
50 |
M |
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Yes |
Yes |
NC |
NC |
NC |
Professor |
University |
------ |
Martha J. |
Wife |
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F |
W |
43 |
M |
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Yes |
Yes |
NC |
NC |
NC |
None |
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Wm. E. |
Son |
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M |
W |
14 |
S |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
VA |
NC |
NC |
None |
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Martha E. |
Daughter |
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F |
W |
11 |
S |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
VA |
NC |
NC |
None |
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Closson |
Ruth |
Lodger |
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F |
W |
30 |
S |
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Yes |
Yes |
Indiana |
Michigan |
Indiana |
Asst. Chief Operator |
Telegraph Op. |
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1930 Chicago, Cook County,
IL, Census |
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Name |
Relation |
Home |
Personal Description |
Education |
Birth |
Occupation |
Last |
First |
O/R |
Value |
Sex |
Race |
Age |
S/M |
Age
First
Md. |
Attend
Sch/College
1929 |
Able
Read &
Write |
Self |
Father |
Mother |
Occ. |
Trade |
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William "Bill" Dodd, Jr. received his bachelor’s degree
from the University of Chicago where his father worked as a
Professor of History, and his master’s degree from Harvard
University. He taught history in Washington D.C., Rutgers, The
College of William and Mary, and the University of California
during his lifetime. William "Bill" Jr. and his sister
Martha Eccles had a close relationship with Daniel C. Roper,
President Roosevelt’s first Secretary of Commerce. Some sources
say that it was through William "Bill" Jr. and Roper, that
William Sr. passed on to President Roosevelt his interest in
receiving an ambassadorship. |
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On 08 Jun 1933, President Roosevelt offered Dr.
William Edward Dodd, Sr., the ambassadorship position
in Germany. William, Sr., along with his wife Mattie, and two
children William "Bill" Jr. and Martha, left for Germany
on 05 Jul 1933. |
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(Left to Right) Martha Eccles Dodd,
William Edward Dodd Jr., William Edward Dodd Sr., and Martha
"Mattie" Ida Johns Dodd |
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There is not much information about Bill Dodd's time in
Germany, but we do know that his father, Ambassador William
Dodd, was not altogether pleased with his position once he
arrived in Germany. |
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Ambassador Dodd advised Adolf Hitler in March 1934 that
Jewish influence should be restrained in Germany as it was in
the United States, "in such a way as to not give great
offense." Hitler ignored Dodd's advice and responded that "if
they [the Jews] continue their activity, we shall make a
complete end of them in this country." |
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In her memoir, Martha Dodd (Bill's sister) describes Bill
from before and during the first stay in Berlin (1933-35) as
“youthful, eager, naïve. William Dodd Sr. once said that,
“[Bill] dreads all kinds of hard work.” Hitler’s Germany quickly
changed these characteristics. Through his experiences, Bill
became a more serious and more mature person. “My brother was
the only member of the family,” Martha wrote, “who could not
endure the Nazi scene”. She writes it was the close-up
observation of Nazi society at the University of Berlin that
changed him. “He could not restrain his impulsive and venomous
anti-Fascist feeling.” and this is why he returned to the states
in 1935. However, he “was young and optimistic enough… to do
something about [fascism],” and returned to Europe in 1936. He
stopped teaching having decided, “The classroom was not his
battlefield,” and joined the IPC (International Peace Campaign).
Martha tells us, “Bill ‘grew-up’ in Germany. Though he was
twenty-seven or twenty–eight when he went there, he was as
immature emotionally as most American men his age,” but after
his stay in Europe, “he returned to America… armed with
convictions and knowledge.” |
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In 1935, feeling ineffectual, Ambassador Dodd offered to
resign, but President Roosevelt allowed him only a
recuperative visit to the U.S. The President wrote to U.S.
Ambassador to Italy in September 1935 that he and Dodd had been
"far more accurate in your pessimism for the past two years than
any of my other friends in Europe."
During his father’s tenure as Ambassador, William "Bill" Jr.
and his father met with President Roosevelt in Hyde Park,
New York. |
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Bill’s mother, Mattie, tells him in a letter, “I think
you should be getting a better salary at your time of life.”
Bill was in his 30s with a Phd, but still relied on his parents
for part of his income. |
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(Left) William Jr., Mattie, Martha and
William Sr.; (Right) William Jr., Martha, William Sr. and Mattie |
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William Jr., Mattie and William Sr. |
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In 1938
Dr. William Edward Dodd, Sr. gave up his Ambassadorship and
left Berlin. On 28 May 1838, less than five months after her
return to the US from Germany, Martha "Mattie" Ida Johns Dodd
died as a result of a "heart lesion" (a
stress or trauma |
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After he came home from Berlin, William "Bill" Jr.
initially returned to teaching but he was drawn to political
activism. In 1936, he testified in London in favor of protecting
Spain’s republican government against attacks from
fascist-backed rebels, and in 1937 raised money on behalf of
homeless Spanish children of the Basque region. He served as
chairman of the Japanese Boycott Committee, the American League
Against War and Fascism, and the American Committee for
Anti-Nazi Literature. |
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In 1938, at age 32, William "Bill" Jr. sought the
Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in Virginia’s 8th congressional district,
which was directly across the Potomac River from Washington,
D.C. According to Martha’s memoir, Bill had decided, “direct
political action was the only solution.” The seat was held by four-term incumbent Howard W. Smith, a
conservative Democrat on the United States House Committee on
Rules who used his position to obstruct parts of the Roosevelt
Administration’s New Deal agenda. Dodd ran as an ardent
supporter of the New Deal, with the support of Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes and others in the President’s circle.
William "Bill" Jr., however, was not known to many voters,
had little campaign organization in the district, and very
little political experience. Like several other New Dealers
seeking to unseat “disloyal” incumbent Democrats in 1938
primaries, William "Bill" Dodd, Jr. lost badly. Smith
outpolled Dodd by a 3 to 1 margin. He was later appointed to a
position in the Works Progress Administration. |
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In 1939, he became engaged to Susan B. Anthony II, fellow
social activist and grandniece of famed suffragist Susan B.
Anthony. Only four days after that announcement, however,
the engagement was broken. |
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The following year William "Bill" Dodd, Jr. wed another
social activist, Audrey Koolish, of Chicago. Audrey was
born 12 Nov 1919, in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. She was the
daughter of Philip Koolish and Sara Allen. They
had two sons, Thomas Allen Dodd (born in September 1941),
and Peter Johns Dodd. |
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Children of William Edward Dodd, Jr. and Audrey Koolish |
Name |
Birth |
Death |
Spouse |
Thomas Allen
Dodd |
Sep 1941 |
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Peter Johns Dodd |
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After his marriage to Audrey ended in divorce, "Bill" married
Katharine Hubbard. |
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After Ambassador Dodd's death in early 1940, William "Bill"
Jr. established the William Edward Dodd Foundation. It was
intended to advance his father’s Jeffersonian ideals, but it
soon came under fire for financing U.S. Week, a periodical
written and edited by leftists. In 1941 Dodd and his sister
co-edited “Ambassador Dodd’s Diary: 1933-1938,” based on the
diaries their father kept during his tenure in Berlin from 1933
to 1938. |
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William's children (William Jr. and Martha)
Edited their father's Diary from 1933-38 for publication |
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In the 1940s, William Edward Dodd, Jr. became the target
of an early congressional crusade against alleged communist
sympathizers and subversives. A 1943 amendment to an emergency
war appropriations bill deprived William "Bill" Jr. and two
other federal officials of their salary and positions. Three
years later, the United States Supreme Court declared the law’s
provision to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder. |
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Secretary of State Hull, a former opponent of his father, denied
Bill a passport in 1941 when he tried to leave the country. It’s
not clear, whether this action was out of spite or because Hull
had suspicions about Bill’s loyalty. Around this time, Bill Dodd
went to New York to work for the news radio station WMCA. Here
he spent a year hosting a liberal international politics talk
show. In 1942, Bill became an assistant editor with the
Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, a branch of the Federal
Communications Commission. His responsibilities included reading
transcripts of foreign broadcasts to pick out items that would
be of interest to various government departments. |
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William Edward Dodd, Jr. |
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In 1942, the FBI began to take note of Bill after he started
work with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). On April
13, 1943, Bill sat for a hearing before the Kerr Committee, a
sub-committee of the Dies Committee. The Kerr Committee was
tasked with determining if Bill could still be considered fit
for government service, based on his activities and political
allegiances. Obviously, the Committee detected his instability,
as they later judged Bill unfit for Government service and the
FCC fired him. |
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We know without a shadow of a doubt, that Bill Dodd's sister,
Martha, was a Soviet spy. There is some information that
suggests that he may have been working for the Soviet's, too,
but he was never charged with espionage like his sister and her
husband, Alfred Stern, were. |
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William "Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. moved to San
Francisco, California, in 1950, where he worked as a clerk at
Macy’s Department Store. |
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William "Bill" Edward Dodd, Jr. died of cancer in San
Francisco on 18 Oct 1952. He was 47 years old. He was buried at Rock Creek
Cemetery in Washington D. C. near his parents. |
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SOURCES |
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North Carolina Highway
Historical Marker Program - William E. Dodd 1869-1940 -
Click Here |
Ambassador William E. Dodd -
Wikipedia |
*William Dodd - The U.S.
Ambassador in Hitler's Germany -
Click Here |
**The University of Chicago
Faculty - William E. Dodd -
Click Here |
Hall of Holography - World War I -
Click Here |
Biography in Contest:
William E. Dodd -
Click Here |
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The Spy Who Loved His Family
- William E. Dodd, Jr. -
Click Here |
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