Joel Barlow. Watercolor on ivory, 1806, by William Dunlap. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joel Barlow.
Image
Barlow, Joel (1754-1812)
In
Article
Barlow, Joel (1754-1812), businessman, diplomat, and poet
Carla J. Mulford
Barlow, Joel (24 March 1754–26 December 1812), businessman, diplomat, and poet, was born in Redding, Connecticut, the son of Samuel Barlow and Esther Hull, fairly well-to-do farmers. Barlow was born the second-to-last child in a large family. Given the size of the family and their farm, Barlow could receive formal education only from the local minister, an education probably interspersed with farm chores. When Barlow was eighteen, his father arranged for his schooling at Moor’s Indian School (now Dartmouth) in Hanover, New Hampshire. Barlow began his studies there in 1772, yet his father’s death shortly thereafter made it necessary for Barlow to return home. He entered Yale College with the class of 1778. At Yale Barlow began to give evidence of an interest in poetry, in moral and political philosophy, and in science as a key to the improvement of the human condition. His first published poem, a broadside publication, was a satire in pseudobiblical verse about the bad food served in Yale commons. Although he wrote poems throughout his college days, Barlow’s best-known college verses were verse orations delivered at two Yale commencements, ...
Article
Daggett, Rollin Mallory (1831-1901), journalist, congressman, minister to Hawaii, and author
Lawrence I. Berkove
Daggett, Rollin Mallory (22 February 1831–12 November 1901), journalist, congressman, minister to Hawaii, and author, was born in Richville, New York, the son of Eunice White and Gardner Daggett, farmers. Daggett was the youngest of seven children, the other six being girls. After his mother’s death in 1833, the family moved to Defiance, Ohio, in 1837. In 1849 Daggett became a printer, learning a trade which endowed him with an education and influenced his later choice of a journalistic career....
Article
Humphreys, David (1752-1818), poet and diplomat
Edward M. Cifelli
Humphreys, David (10 July 1752–21 February 1818), poet and diplomat, was born in Derby, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend Daniel Humphrey(s), pastor of the Congregational Church in Derby, and Sarah Bowers. With his father instructing him at home in Latin and English grammar as well as in rhetoric, the poet entered Yale College at age fifteen. There he founded a literary society, known as the Brothers in Unity, and met the other writers who would later be known with him as the Connecticut Wits: ...
Article
Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891), author and diplomat
Thomas Wortham
Lowell, James Russell (22 February 1819–12 August 1891), author and diplomat, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Lowell, a liberal Congregational minister, and Harriet Brackett Spence. Among New Englanders who were apt to take ancestry seriously, the Lowell family was already firmly established in the region’s ecclesiastical and legal annals. During the nineteenth century the Lowell name became synonymous with manufacturing wealth and State Street trusts, but Charles Lowell’s descendants benefited little from this tradition. Their area of prominence was in literature; both James Russell Lowell’s sister Mary Lowell Putnam and brother ...
Image
Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891)
In
James Russell Lowell. Engraving, c. 1894, from a drawing by S. W. Rowse, 1855. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-100831).
Article
Piatt, John James (1835-1917), author and diplomat
Robert L. Gale
Piatt, John James (01 March 1835–16 February 1917), author and diplomat, was born at James’ Mills (later Milton), in Dearborn (now Ohio) County, Indiana, the son of John Bear Piatt and Emily Scott, farmers. Piatt attended school at nearby Rising Sun, on the Ohio River. In 1841 the family moved to a farm near Columbus, Ohio, where Piatt continued his education. At age fourteen he began an apprenticeship as a printer in the office of his uncle, Charles Scott, who published the ...
Article
van Dyke, Henry (1852-1933), Presbyterian minister, poet, and diplomat
John D. Buggeln
van Dyke, Henry (10 November 1852–10 April 1933), Presbyterian minister, poet, and diplomat, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Jackson van Dyke, a prominent Presbyterian minister, and Henrietta Ashmead, the daughter of a notable Philadelphia attorney. Van Dyke studied at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and attended Princeton College, where he wrote Princeton’s “Triangle Song,” received a B.A. in 1873, and earned an M.A. in 1876. The following year he graduated from Princeton Seminary and then studied at the University of Berlin for two years before being ordained a Presbyterian minister....
