Edwin North McClellan

Edwin made the Marine Corps his career and wrote the book on the Marines in World War I, the official book published by the Corps in 1920. As for his family background, his mother was Irish and his father was Scottish, serving in the Civil War before pursuing his career as a carpenter. They married in Philadelphia in 1868, bringing into the world eleven children with seven of them living to adulthood.

Five of those children were older and looked up to by Edwin, who was known by his nickname, Ned. The oldest was William, who set a high standard by attending the University of Pennsylvania and earning his PhD. He even served briefly as Dean of the Wharton School, the world’s oldest collegiate business school.

Law school was what interested Edwin, so he went to his brother’s college after graduating from Brown Preparatory School near Rittenhouse Square in 1902. Before completing all his college coursework he changed direction and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1907. A promotion to 1st Lieutenant followed in 1910. He embarked on various expeditions abroad, then found and married Ethel Shoemaker in Philadelphia in 1914.

By then he had been assigned to the Judge Advocate General’s office at Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC). His work was mostly writing, honing his skills for the direction his career would soon take him. Ethel gave birth to their first son, Richard, in 1915 and Edwin was promoted to captain the following year. While in Washington, he completed the requirements for his law degree, the LL.B., from George Washington University. 

During the first World War, the captain became a major and commanded the Marines aboard USS Minnesota, a training ship stationed in the Chesapeake Bay. It wasn’t until after the war that he was sent to France as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. Charged with documenting the activities of the Marine Corps during the war, he spent much of 1919 covering every inch of the countryside where Marines had fought and died.

Edwin returned home in time to welcome his daughter, Anna, who was born in October. He remained at HQMC until 1925 in charge of the newly created Historical Section. It consisted only of him and a few enlisted clerks, tasked with the mission of writing the definitive history of the Marines in the war.

That 118-page book, The United States Marine Corps in the World War, was published by the Government Printing Office in 1920. (Updated editions were published in 1968 and 2014.) After that he began working on a complete history of the corps since its founding on November 10, 1775.

Meanwhile, a second son, Donald, arrived in 1921. Edwin continued as officer-in-charge, and his writing included a hundred magazine articles for Leatherneck and Marine Corps Gazette. He was editor of five issues of the latter. 

In his position as a historian, he submitted a suggestion that November 10 be commemorated as the birth date of the Marine Corps. It wasn’t previously recognized on a regular basis, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Major General John A. Lejeune, liked the idea. It was so ordered, and declared a Marine Corps holiday, celebrated throughout the Corps to this day.

Beginning in 1925 Edwin had assignments in Hawaii, so he brought his family there and then to California. They remained there through 1930 while he served with the 2d Brigade during the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua. The troops were there in the midst of the country’s civil war, assigned to fight bandits and monitor the 1928 national election. 

Edwin brought the family back to Washington in 1930 to again direct the Historical Section at HQMC and continue writing a complete history of the Corps. He produced nine chapters in addition to 22 chapters previously written, but still hadn’t finished when he was reassigned in 1934. A promotion to Lieutenant Colonel came with a two-year tour that took him to Haiti, Shanghai, and the Philippines before he retired in 1936.

The 1940 census lists the entire family living in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore, where Edwin said his occupation was magazine editor. That probably refers to when he spent some post-retirement time in Hawaii working on Paradise of the Pacific magazine.

Edwin’s reprinted book in 1968 coincided with the 50th anniversary of the war. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Leonard F. Chapman, came to Philadelphia to present a copy of the new edition to Edwin. He expressed his pride that it “is still the essential starting point for any meaningful research into our past.” 

Ewin died in 1971 at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital following a heart attack. His last years of retirement were spent at home in Lansdowne, less than two miles from his final resting place here in Section 5. In the same plot are his parents, brothers Albert and John, and sisters Isabella, Emma, and Elizabeth.