MSS 252 - Pierre Crabites Collection, Addendum 1

Biographical Note

            Crabitès, Pierre

born February 17, 1877 (New Orleans, LA)

died October 9, 1943 (Baghdad, Iraq)

            Pierre Crabitès, the son of Pierre and Martha (née Patton) Crabitès, was born February 17, 1877, at 252 Marais Street in the Faubourg Treme section of New Orleans, Louisiana.  His father, a native of Sus, France, died when young Pierre was seven years old, and he was raised by his mother and her family.  After earning a master's degree at the College of the Immaculate Conception, he completed work for a law degree from Tulane University in 1898, before pursuing further graduate work at the University of Paris and the University of Berlin.  Returning to New Orleans the next year, he began the practice of law in the firm of Cage, Baldwin, and Crabitès.

            Well traveled, an outstanding linguist and lawyer, and well connected socially, Crabitès was recommended to and appointed by President William H. Taft in 1911 to the International Mixed Tribunals of Egypt, also known as the Mixed Courts of Egypt.  The purpose of the Mixed Courts was to consolidate the many different consular courts which had previously functioned in Egypt.  Taking with him his wife, Charlotte, and their son Henry, Crabitès served on the court from 1911 until his retire­ment in 1936, when he returned to Louisiana and joined the faculty of the Law School of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  With the outbreak of World War II he served as an advisor to United States missions in the Middle East, where he died suddenly on October 9, 1943, in Baghdad.  Crabitès was the author of ten books and numerous scholarly and popular articles.