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Edward Lawrence Logan
Logan in 1916
Justice of the Municipal Court, South Boston District
In office 1914 – July 6, 1939
Preceded by	Joseph D. Fallon
Succeeded by	Leo H. Leary
Special Justice of the Municipal Court, South Boston District
In office 1907–1914
Appointed by	Curtis Guild Jr.
Preceded by	Ralph W. Gloag
Succeeded by	William J. Day
Member of the Massachusetts Senate from the 6th Suffolk district
In office 1906
Preceded by	Thomas J. Collins
Succeeded by	Frank J. Linehan
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the 14th Suffolk district
In office 1901–1902 Serving with Daniel J. Barry (1901), David J. Gleason (1902)
Preceded by	David J. Gleason, Michael J. Sullivan
Succeeded by	Michael F. Curran, J. Frank O'Hare
Member of the Boston Common Council from Ward 14
In office 1899–1900 Serving with George A. Donahoe; James F. Mulcahy (1899); J. Frank O'Hare (1900)
Personal details
Born	(1875-01-20)January 20, 1875 South Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	July 6, 1939(1939-07-06) (aged 64) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Resting place	Mount Calvary Cemetery, Roslindale, Massachusetts
Party	Democratic
Children	2
Education	Boston Latin School Harvard College (AB) Harvard Law School (LLB)
Profession	Lawyer, judge
Military career
Allegiance	United States
Branch	Massachusetts Volunteer Militia Massachusetts National Guard United States Army (National Army)
Rank	Major general Lieutenant general (Massachusetts, on retirement)
Commands	9th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment 101st Infantry Regiment 51st Infantry Brigade 26th Division
Conflicts	Spanish–American War Mexican border service World War I (Chemin des Dames, Toul sector, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne)
Awards	Silver Star (Citation Star)

Edward Lawrence Logan (January 20, 1875 – July 6, 1939) was an American lawyer, judge, politician, and National Guard officer from South Boston, Massachusetts. Over a public career of more than four decades he combined three simultaneous vocations: he served on the Municipal Court for the South Boston District from 1907 until his death, as its presiding justice from 1914; he rose through the ranks of the Massachusetts militia from private to major general; and he became one of the most prominent veterans' advocates in New England after World War I. Logan International Airport in East Boston, named for him by the Massachusetts legislature in 1943, has carried his name for more than eighty years.

The eldest son of an Irish immigrant businessman who himself commanded Boston's largely Irish "Fighting Ninth" regiment, Logan enlisted in that regiment as a Harvard College senior during the Spanish–American War and served as its regimental sergeant major. After earning a law degree from Harvard Law School, he served briefly on the Boston Common Council, in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in the Massachusetts Senate before leaving elective politics for the bench in 1907. Recommissioned in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in 1901, he became colonel of the 9th Massachusetts Infantry in 1912, led it on the Mexican border in 1916, and commanded its successor, the 101st Infantry Regiment of the 26th "Yankee" Division, through some twenty-six months of federal service in World War I, including six major operations in France. He was cited for gallantry in action during the Aisne-Marne Offensive of July 1918, a citation later converted to the Silver Star.

After the war Logan reorganized the 101st Infantry within the peacetime Massachusetts National Guard, was promoted to brigadier general in 1921, and in March 1923 became the first postwar commander of the reconstituted 26th Division, which he led until 1928. On his retirement from the Guard on March 21, 1938, Massachusetts conferred on him the rank of lieutenant general, the first in the history of the state's National Guard. A leader of The American Legion in Massachusetts and a president of the National Guard Association of the United States, Logan was repeatedly mentioned for governor or mayor of Boston but never again sought elective office. He died in Boston in 1939 after a brief illness. Four years later the Commonwealth attached his name to its rapidly expanding airport in East Boston, now General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport; a bronze statue of Logan by Joseph Coletti has stood on the airport grounds since 1956.

Early life and family

Logan was born in South Boston on January 20, 1875, the eldest of the nine children of Lawrence J. Logan and Catherine M. (O'Connor) Logan. His father had emigrated to Boston in 1858 from Ballygar, County Galway, Ireland, as a teenager and prospered in the liquor and brewing trades, eventually heading the Boston Brewing Company in South Boston. The elder Logan was equally prominent as a citizen-soldier: he served for years as an officer of the 9th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia—the largely Irish-American unit known since the Civil War as the "Fighting Ninth"—preceded his son as the regiment's colonel, and ultimately attained a general's rank in the state forces. The family lived at 560 East Broadway in South Boston, a house remembered as a busy gathering place for relatives and friends.

Logan's siblings included Leo J. Logan, who became a Catholic priest and served as pastor of the Star of the Sea Church in Marblehead, and Theodore M. Logan. A nephew, Edward F. Logan, later also commanded the Yankee Division, making the Logans the only uncle-and-nephew pair among the division's commanding generals.

Logan was educated at Boston Latin School and entered Harvard College in 1894 as a member of the class of 1898. He completed his undergraduate work in three years, and received his A.B. with his class in 1898. He then studied at Harvard Law School, finishing the course in 1900 and receiving the LL.B. in 1901, after which he pursued postgraduate legal study.

Spanish–American War

In the spring of 1898, shortly before his Harvard graduation, Logan enlisted in the 9th Regiment of Infantry, Massachusetts United States Volunteers, when the regiment was mustered for the Spanish–American War; his father was then serving in it as a lieutenant colonel. Logan served through the war as the regiment's sergeant major. According to research by the family historian Michael J. Cummings, Logan remained at Camp Dewey in Framingham, in charge of recruiting and re-enlistment, while the regiment deployed to Cuba for the Santiago campaign, where it suffered heavy losses—chiefly from disease. Yellow fever nearly killed his father during the campaign and did kill his uncle, Major Michael O'Connor of the same regiment. Logan was mustered out with the regiment in the autumn of 1898 and entered Harvard Law School that fall.

Political career

Boston Common Council

Logan entered politics as a Democrat while still a first-year law student: in the fall of 1898 he was elected to the Boston Common Council—the lower, ward-based branch of the city's then-bicameral council—from Ward 14, his home ward in South Boston, and he served in that body in 1899 and 1900. Each ward returned three members annually. In 1899 Logan sat with George A. Donahoe and James F. Mulcahy; in 1900, with Donahoe and J. Frank O'Hare; he and Donahoe had taken the places of John H. Dunn and William P. Hickey in the ward's delegation, and on Logan's departure after 1900 the delegation passed to O'Hare, Patrick J. Shiels, and John J. Teevens Jr.

Massachusetts House of Representatives

Logan as a state representative on the committee on metropolitan affairs, 1902

In November 1900, immediately after completing law school, Logan was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the 14th Suffolk district, a two-member district consisting of Boston's Ward 14; he and fellow Democrat Daniel J. Barry defeated two Republican opponents, Barry polling 2,368 votes and Logan 2,253. The pair succeeded the ward's 1900 representatives, Democrats David J. Gleason and Michael J. Sullivan. Logan was reelected in 1901 and served the 1902 session alongside Gleason, who had returned to the House in Barry's stead. In his two terms Logan served on the committees on metropolitan affairs and on the revision of the Public Statutes, and as a House monitor. He did not seek reelection in the fall of 1902—withdrawing, as he later wrote, to devote himself to legal practice—and the district's seats passed to Democrats Michael F. Curran and J. Frank O'Hare, the latter Logan's former Common Council colleague.

Massachusetts Senate

The retirement proved temporary. In November 1905 Logan was elected to the Massachusetts Senate from the 6th Suffolk district, which then comprised Boston's wards 13, 14, and 15, covering South Boston; he defeated the Republican J. M. Porter by 6,447 votes to 1,701. He succeeded fellow South Boston Democrat Thomas J. Collins, and in the 1906 session served on the Senate's committees on the judiciary and on military affairs. In the fall of 1906 he sought the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 10th congressional district, but was defeated by Joseph F. O'Connell, who went on to win the seat. Logan did not return to the Senate: his seat in the redistricted 6th Suffolk district passed in 1907 to Frank J. Linehan, a South Boston Democrat who had served in the Common Council during Logan's own tenure there.

The 1906 loss ended Logan's career in elective office. Although he remained an influential figure in Massachusetts Democratic politics for the rest of his life and was periodically discussed as a potential nominee for governor of Massachusetts or mayor of Boston—particularly after his return from World War I—he never sought either office.

Legal and judicial career

Logan was admitted to the Suffolk County bar in 1901 and from 1902 practiced law in Boston in the office of Charles F. Donnelly in the Ames Building; in November 1907 he opened his own office in Barristers Hall. He also served as a director of the Old South Trust Company, the South Boston Savings Bank, and the Hibernia Savings Bank.

In 1907 the Republican governor Curtis Guild Jr. appointed Logan, a Democrat, a special justice of the Municipal Court for the South Boston District, filling the seat previously held by Ralph W. Gloag; he served alongside the court's other special justice, Josiah S. Dean, under its longtime presiding judge, Joseph D. Fallon. When Fallon retired in October 1914 after roughly forty years on the South Boston bench, Logan was elevated to succeed him as the court's justice, and the lawyer William J. Day took Logan's former place as special justice. Logan presided over the court for the next quarter century, interrupted only by his war service, and held the position at his death; contemporary obituaries described him as the court's presiding justice of twenty-five years' standing. As a judge he earned a reputation for patience and kindness in handling juvenile and minor offenders, coupled with firmness toward willful adult ones. Following Logan's death, the Boston lawyer Leo H. Leary was appointed to the vacancy in 1939.

Militia career, 1901–1917

Logan had left the state militia in 1899, but in 1901 he rejoined the 9th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, taking a commission as a second lieutenant in Company A of the regiment his father had helped to lead. He advanced through the company grades, serving as first lieutenant and then as captain in command of Company A. In 1909 and 1910 he served as an aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain, on the staff of Governor Eben S. Draper. He was elected major of the 9th Regiment in February 1911 and became its colonel and commanding officer in May 1912. In 1913 Governor Eugene Foss appointed him to the Massachusetts State Armory Commission.

When the border crisis with Mexico led President Woodrow Wilson to call out the National Guard in 1916, Logan commanded the 9th Massachusetts on the Mexican border at El Paso, Texas, from June 18 to November 22, 1916. The tour of hard field service in Texas was later credited with preparing the regiment for its rapid deployment to France the following year.

World War I

Mobilization and the 101st Infantry

In late March 1917, with American entry into the war imminent, the 9th Massachusetts was called into state service to guard railroads, bridges, and other installations against sabotage. After the United States declared war on Germany, the regiment was drafted into federal service, and on August 22, 1917, at Framingham, it was reorganized and redesignated the 101st Infantry Regiment, absorbing large drafts of men from the 5th and 6th Massachusetts Infantry regiments to reach war strength. Logan, retained as colonel, commanded the new regiment, which was assigned to the 52nd Infantry Brigade of the newly organized 26th Division—the "Yankee Division"—formed from the National Guard units of the six New England states under Major General Clarence R. Edwards.

Service in France

Colonel Logan and his staff of the 101st Infantry en route to the front, March 1918

The 101st Infantry sailed for Europe in September 1917 and landed in France about a month after its muster, the first National Guard regiment of the American Expeditionary Forces to reach French soil. It was also, according to the regimental history, the first National Guard unit to enter the front lines, going into the trenches with the French in the Chemin des Dames sector early in 1918. On February 23, 1918, the regiment carried out a successful trench raid that the regimental history describes as the first raid in which American troops participated and the first attack made behind a barrage fired by American artillery.

Logan with a French officer near Vailly, in the Chemin des Dames sector, 1918 (U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph)

Under Logan the 101st fought through the division's major operations of 1918: the defensive sectors of Lorraine and the Île-de-France, including the Toul sector fighting around Apremont in April 1918; the Champagne-Marne defensive; the Aisne-Marne counteroffensive of July 1918 northwest of Château-Thierry; the St. Mihiel offensive of September 1918; and the Meuse–Argonne offensive north of Verdun that continued until the Armistice. During the Aisne-Marne fighting, on July 25, 1918, Logan was cited by the commanding general of the American Expeditionary Forces for gallantry in action for steadying his troops while they were under artillery fire; the citation, published in AEF Citation Orders No. 9 of August 1, 1920, entitled him to wear a citation star on his Victory Medal ribbon, an award subsequently converted to the Silver Star. Logan commanded the 101st for some twenty-six months in all, and the regimental history records that he served longer in the front lines than any other colonel in the United States Army.

Return and demobilization

Logan and his staff at the head of the parade column, passing the Massachusetts State House and the governor's reviewing stand during the Yankee Division's homecoming parade, April 25, 1919

The regiment sailed for home in March 1919. On Friday, April 25, 1919, Logan led the 101st through Boston in the Yankee Division's homecoming parade, in which more than 500 of the division's wounded rode in automobiles. The regiment was mustered out of federal service at Camp Devens at the end of April 1919.

Postwar National Guard career

After demobilization Logan directed the reorganization of the 101st Infantry as a unit of the peacetime Massachusetts National Guard. In January 1921 he was promoted to brigadier general in command of the Guard's infantry brigade, subsequently designated the 51st Infantry Brigade.

On March 23, 1923, Governor Channing H. Cox approved Logan's appointment as major general commanding the 26th Division, which was simultaneously reconstituted as a complete National Guard division within Massachusetts through the creation of a new infantry regiment, the 182nd. As the division's first postwar commander, Logan was responsible for rebuilding, recruiting, and training the Yankee Division as an all-Massachusetts formation that perpetuated the units and identity of the wartime division. Under the National Guard regulation limiting general officers to five-year tours, Logan's term in command expired in March 1928; pending Governor Alvan T. Fuller's selection of a successor, command of the division devolved temporarily on Brigadier General Erland F. Fish, and Major General Alfred F. Foote was subsequently appointed to the post.

Logan thereafter remained on the rolls of the Massachusetts National Guard until his formal retirement on March 21, 1938, when the Commonwealth conferred on him the rank of lieutenant general—the first time that rank had ever been held in the Massachusetts National Guard. The state title was later abolished; at the time of Logan's death it was held only by one other officer, the retired Lieutenant General Alfred F. Foote.

Veterans' advocacy and civic activities

Logan spent much of the interwar period as an organizer and spokesman for veterans and the National Guard. He was an early leader of the American Legion in Massachusetts, serving as commander of its Department of Massachusetts, and he campaigned for improved benefits for former servicemen, including—although he was never an aviator himself—the extension of veterans' benefits to military pilots, then regarded as an exceptionally high-risk group. In 1925 he was named to the American Legion's official delegation to the congress of the Interallied Veterans Federation (FIDAC) in Rome.

Logan also served as president of the National Guard Association of the United States in the early 1920s, during the period in which the association was pressing for the Guard's place in the postwar national defense structure. He presided over the association's annual convention at Denver in October 1923, reading General John J. Pershing's letter of regrets to the delegates; Brigadier General Milton A. Reckord of Maryland was elected president at that convention. Logan remained a familiar figure at Yankee Division reunions and veterans' gatherings, including events in Washington attended by Edwards and other wartime commanders.

In civic life, Logan served in the 1930s as administrator of the George Robert White Fund, the City of Boston's largest charitable trust, taking charge of the fund's affairs at a time when the management of its properties had drawn public criticism; a contemporary editorial credited him with restoring confidence in the trust, whose benefactions included the Whittier Street Health Unit. He was active in Catholic charities, including the Home for Destitute Catholic Children, and belonged to the Charitable Irish Society and the Clover Club of Boston. In 1929, in recognition of his charitable work, Pope Pius XI made him a Knight of the Order of Malta. His club memberships over the years also included the University Club, the Harvard Club of Boston, the Boston City Club, the Boston Athletic Association, the Puritan Club, and the Wollaston Golf Club.

Personal life

Logan was still unmarried at thirty-eight, when he prepared his entry for his Harvard class's fifteenth-anniversary report in 1913 and was living at the family home on East Broadway in South Boston. He later married and had two children, Edward L. Logan Jr. and Patricia. By the late 1920s Logan and his wife were spending part of each year in Washington, D.C., where they kept an apartment at the Carlton Hotel and appeared regularly in the capital's society columns. The family also maintained a summer home in Cohasset.

Death and funeral

Logan was stricken with a heart ailment in late June 1939 and suffered a stroke on July 4; he died on the night of Thursday, July 6, 1939, at the Phillips House of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, with his family at his bedside. He was 64. His body lay first at his summer home in Cohasset and then at his home in South Boston. On Monday, July 10, a solemn high requiem Mass was celebrated at the Gate of Heaven Church in South Boston by his brother, the Reverend Leo J. Logan, with military honors accompanying the civil rites; among those paying tribute were United States Senator David I. Walsh, former governor and Boston mayor James Michael Curley, and former mayor John F. Fitzgerald. Logan was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in the Roslindale section of Boston.

Editorial tributes emphasized the unusual breadth of his career. The Boston Post called him one of the state's most distinguished men, a modest figure who might at various times have had the Democratic nomination for governor or for mayor of Boston had he wanted it. The Springfield Republican judged that his record as soldier, judge, and citizen was one "any community would view with pride," singling out his rehabilitation of the George Robert White Fund and his humane record on the bench.

Legacy

Logan International Airport

Main article: Logan International Airport

Logan's most visible memorial is Boston's airport. The state-operated airfield on the East Boston flats—opened in 1923 and known through the 1930s as the Boston Airport—was renamed in Logan's honor by the Massachusetts legislature as part of a wartime act, approved June 12, 1943, that authorized a major program of enlargement and development of the field; the act designated it the General Edward Lawrence Logan Airport. Logan had no career in aviation and, by most accounts, never flew; the honor reflected his standing as a soldier, jurist, and civic figure, and his postwar advocacy of veterans' benefits for military airmen. With the growth of transatlantic service, a further act of the legislature, approved April 29, 1954, changed the name to the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport, the name the airport retains.

A heroic bronze statue of Logan in uniform, by the Boston sculptor Joseph Coletti, was dedicated at the airport entrance in a public ceremony on May 20, 1956; Logan's widow and his son Edward Jr. attended, and his daughter Patricia unveiled the figure. The statue has been relocated several times as the airport has grown, and it is included on Boston's Irish Heritage Trail of public landmarks associated with the city's Irish community.

Renaming proposals

The airport's name has periodically been proposed for change. In September 2009, following the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, state representative Lori Ehrlich filed a bill to rename the facility the Logan-Kennedy International Airport. The proposal drew a skeptical response—Logan's great-nephew Malcolm Logan suggested the Kennedys were already amply memorialized—and The Boston Globe editorialized against changing the name of an airport already named for someone else; the bill was not enacted. A 2024 suggestion to rename the airport for the Boston Celtics great Bill Russell likewise attracted public debate but produced no change.

Dates of rank

Insignia	Rank	Component	Date
—	Private, later sergeant major	9th Massachusetts Infantry, U.S. Volunteers	1898
	Second lieutenant	Massachusetts Volunteer Militia	1901
	Captain	Massachusetts Volunteer Militia	c. 1906 (after service as first lieutenant)
	Major	Massachusetts Volunteer Militia	February 1911
	Colonel	Massachusetts Volunteer Militia / National Army	May 1912; federal service 1917–1919
	Brigadier general	Massachusetts National Guard	January 1921
	Major general	Massachusetts National Guard	March 23, 1923
	Lieutenant general (state rank)	Massachusetts National Guard (retired list)	March 21, 1938

External links

• Media related to Edward Lawrence Logan at Wikimedia Commons
• Leonid Kondratiuk, "About Logan: Major General Edward L. Logan", Massachusetts Port Authority, formerly at massport.com (available via the Wayback Machine)
• Contemporary newspaper coverage of Logan in the Library of Congress Chronicling America collection