Funston
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FREDERICK, an American military officer; born in Ohio, Nov. 9, 1865; was educated at the Kansas State University; engaged in newspaper work in Kansas City in 1890; was special agent of the Agricultural Department to investigate the flora of Alaska in 1893- 1894; enlisted for service with the Cubans in 1896, and fought against Spain for a year and a half. When the American-Spanish War broke out he was appointed colonel of the 20th Kansas Volunteers, with which he was ordered to the Philippines, where he achieved a marked success. He was the first to enter Malolos, the capital of the Filipino insurgents, March 31, 1899. President McKinley promoted him Brigadier-General General of volunteers May 2, 1899, in recognition of his fearless and brilliant feat in swimming across the Rio Grande at Calumpit under a heavy fire, and establishing a rope ferry, by means of which the Americans crossed the river and defeated the insurgents. On May 2, 1900, while cruising up the Rio Grande he espied a ladder connecting with the summit of a cliff on 4 3 mellswin 7 5. Chanterelle 6. Champignon 7. Hedgehog Fungus which he discovered numerous boxes containing Filipino documents, and all of Aguinaldo's correspondence from the time he first communicated with Dewey down to the action at Malolos. On March 23, 1901, he captured Aguinaldo at his hiding place in Palanon, Isabella province, Luzon. In recognition of this service he was commissioned a Brigadier- General, U. S. A., on March 30 following. In 1906 he commanded Dept. of California during the fire and earthquake, and in 1907-1908, troops at Goldfields, Col. In 1914 he commanded the troops in the Vera Cruz, Mexico, expedition, and in 1916 troops on the Mexican border, and had direction of the campaign to secure the Mexican bandit Villa. He died in 1919.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's got the date of death wrong: Frederick Funston died of a heart attack in San Antonio on Feb. 19, 1917, not 1919. That timing mattered enormously — Funston, not John J. Pershing, was the senior officer expected to command an American army in Europe, and his sudden death left Pershing to be given the American Expeditionary Force weeks later. Otherwise the career sketched here still stands, though Funston's reputation does not: the ruse by which he captured Aguinaldo in 1901 drew Mark Twain's savage "A Defence of General Funston" (1902), and modern historians of the Philippine-American War treat him as a symbol of the war's harsh methods rather than simply as a hero. His name survives mainly in Camp Funston at Fort Riley, Kansas, site of one of the first large recorded outbreaks of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Written for this edition, 2026.