1929 Philippine Islands Passport Signed by Dwight Davis

I have been collecting passports for more than two decades, and every so often one lands on my desk that connects two threads of history I never expected to meet. This 1929 Philippine Islands passport booklet is exactly that kind of find: a 32 page travel document signed by the man who founded the Davis Cup, issued to a U.S. Army soldier and his wife at a moment when the Philippines existed in a strange constitutional limbo, neither a state nor an independent nation.

The Davis Cup Founder’s Forgotten Signature on a 1929 Philippine Islands Passport

Direct answer: This passport, numbered 26352, was personally signed by Dwight F. Davis in his capacity as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, a post he held from July 8, 1929, to January 9, 1932, under President Herbert Hoover.

What makes the signature interesting is who was holding the pen. Before he ever set foot in Manila, Davis was best known as a champion tennis player. He played on the U.S. team that won the first two international tennis competitions in 1900 and 1902, captained the 1900 squad, and donated the trophy that still bears his name today: the Davis Cup. He also competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics, won the U.S. doubles title three times between 1899 and 1901, and was a doubles runner-up at Wimbledon in 1901. None of that tennis pedigree shows up anywhere on a passport page, but it is part of why I find this document worth pausing over. The hand that authenticated a soldier’s travel document had also helped invent one of the world’s most enduring sporting trophies.

Reading the Booklet: A Soldier, His Wife, and the Paper Trail They Left Behind

Direct answer: The booklet was issued at Manila on September 30, 1929, to William W. Herndon, a soldier in the U.S. Army traveling on official duty, with his wife Madge Herndon listed as an accompanying bearer.

The document itself is in excellent condition for its age: a black and white photograph of the couple, embossed government stamps, rubber stamps, and wax or paper seals, all bound into a 32 page booklet. The closing line reads, in the formal language of the period, that it was “given under my hand and the seal of the Philippine Islands at Manila.” That phrasing alone tells you this was issued under the authority of the Insular Government, the civil administration the United States ran in the Philippines after acquiring the islands from Spain, rather than under any independent Philippine state, since none yet existed.

The Quiet Footnote Behind Madge Herndon’s Name

Direct answer: Madge Herndon survived her husband and died in March 1942, with her obituary placing the family in Spokane, Washington, and noting relatives scattered as far as Honolulu and England.

I try to resist the urge to over-romanticize the people behind these documents, but the obituary trail is genuinely poignant here. According to a 1942 notice in The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Madge Herndon’s home was on Marita Street, and she was survived by William W. Herndon, by then a warrant officer stationed at Geiger Field, along with four sisters and a brother. One sister had settled in Honolulu; three sisters and the brother remained in England. It is a small genealogical detail, but it is exactly the kind of human residue that separates a passport from a mere government form. Thirteen years after this booklet was issued in Manila, the woman photographed inside it was being buried at a military post cemetery in Washington state.

Dating the Document: Where This Booklet Sits in Philippine Passport History

Direct answer: Passports for the Philippine Islands carrying a Governor-General’s signature were issued only between April 7, 1903, and November 14, 1935, after which the territory transitioned first to Commonwealth status and then, in 1946, to full independence.

That window matters for collectors trying to place a document chronologically. The office of Governor-General itself existed from the start of U.S. civil administration in 1901 until the Commonwealth of the Philippines was inaugurated in November 1935, at which point the role was effectively replaced by an elected Filipino president and the title shifted to High Commissioner.

I have written before about an earlier example from this same general period, a 1916 booklet signed by Francis Burton Harrison, the longest serving Governor-General of the Philippines. If you want a point of comparison for how these signatures and seals evolved across different administrations, my earlier piece on a 1916 Philippine Islands passport signed by Governor-General Harrison is a useful companion read. Davis, notably, was one of the final Governors-General to hold the post before that constitutional shift began in earnest.

For readers who want the bureaucratic side of Davis’s career rather than just the tennis trivia, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center biography of Dwight F. Davis lays out his path from Assistant Secretary of War in 1923 to Secretary of War from 1925 to 1929, and finally to the Manila appointment that put his signature on documents like this one.

Why This Particular Booklet Earns a Place in My Collection

Direct answer: Beyond the Davis signature, this is the first 32 page Philippine Islands passport booklet I have personally encountered, which makes its condition and completeness unusually significant for a collector.

I have handled plenty of single sheet or short form U.S. Philippine Islands documents from this period, but a full booklet format, complete with embossed seals, rubber stamps, and an intact photograph, is genuinely rare in my experience. Add the Davis connection, the Hoover era dating, and the human story tucked into a 1942 obituary, and you have a document that rewards close reading on at least three separate levels: political history, sporting history, and quiet personal history. That layering is exactly what keeps provenance research like this worth doing.

A brief family footnote for the historians among you: Davis’s daughter Alice Brooks Davis married Sir Roger Makins, the British Ambassador to the United States, while another daughter, Cynthia Davis, married banker William McChesney Martin Jr., the longest serving Federal Reserve director, who served under five presidents from Truman to Nixon. None of that touches the passport directly, but it is the kind of connective tissue that makes provenance research in this field endlessly rewarding.

 

Tom Topol | Passport Historian & Author
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