Ethan A. Hitchcock (1835-1909) served under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Hitchcock was in his sixties when first appointed by McKinley to be U.S. minister to Russia in 1897. He was recalled in the following year to serve in first McKinley's and then his successor Roosevelt's Cabinet. As Secretary of the Interior, Hitchcock prosecuted a vigorous program for the conservation of natural resources and reorganized the administration of Native American affairs.