William Insco Buchanan was an American diplomate born in Covington, Ohio, in 1853. Buchanan became a member of the Iowa Commission of the World’s Columbian Exposition and in 1890, was appointed the chief of its Department of Agriculture; in 1891 he became chief of its livestock and forestry department, continuing his work throughout the Exposition (May – October 1893). In 1894-1900, Buchanan served as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Buenos Aires, contributing to delineating the Agrentinian-Chilean boundary in the Puna de Atacama. In 1901, he was director-general of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and in 1902 he became the U.S. delegate to the 2nd Pan-American Conference in Mexico. As a result, he became the first U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Panama (1903-1904). In July-August 1906, Buchanan was the leader of the U.S. delegation at the Third Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro. In 1907, he represented the United States at the 2nd Hague Peace Conference and the Central American Peace Conference (Washington, D.C.). In December 1908 – February 1909, in the rank of the U.S. High Commissioner to Venezuela, Buchanan negotiated two claims of a U.S. company and a citizen with the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Francisco Guinan, restoring diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela. To supervise the arbitration of the other cases, Buchanan went to Europe and suddenly died in London while at work in October 1909.