Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/30

 BRYANT.

BRYANT.

1857-'61. He served through the Civil war, at- taining the rank of lieutenxnt-colonel in tiie oOtli Wisconsin infantry ; was adjutant of the state, 1868-'72 and 1876-"82 ; representative in the state legislature in 1878, and assistant attorney-general of the post-office department, 1884-'89, where he edited the Postal Guide, and compiled a volume of postal laws. He became dean of the law depart- ment of the University of Wisconsin in 1889, and president of the commissioners of fisheries of Wis- consin in 1893. He published several legal works.

BRYANT, Qridley, inventor, was born at Scituate, Mass., in 1798. He was apprenticed to a builder in Boston in 1813, and in 1819 established a business of his own. He invented a portable derrick in 1823, which was first used in the con- struction of the U.S. bank, Boston, and in April, 1826, became the projector and engineer of the first railroad in America, used to convey the granite quarried at Quincy to Charlestown for the Bunker Hill monument, of which he was the contractor and builder. He invented the eight- wheel car, a turn-table, a switch, a turnout and other railway equipments, for which he did not obtain patents. In 1834 Ross Winans received a pptent for Bryant's eight-wheel car principle, which he improved and adapted to passenger travel. This patent was purchased by the Balti- more and Ohio road, and as Bryant's eight-wheel car was used on other roads litigations followed and Mr. Bryant appeared as a witness. The fail- ure of the coiporations in whose behalf 1 a testi- fied, to keep their promises of compensation for his disinterested services hastened his death, which occurred at Scituate, Mass., June 13, 1867.

BRYANT, William Cullen, poet, was born in Cummington, Mass., Nov. 3, 1794; son of Peter and Sarah (Snell) Bryant; grandson of Philip and Silence (Howard) Bryant; great-grandson of Ichabod Bryant, and great-great-grandson of Stephen and Abigail (Shaw) Bryant, who came from England and settled in Plymouth, Mass. , in 1632. William Cullen was the second child in a family of seven, and is described as being " pmiy and very delicate in body, and of a painfully delicate nervous temperament." At the age of four years he was sent to the district school, where he obtained elementary instruction until his twelfth year. He early began to rhyme, and wrote a poem in his eleventh year, which he recited at the closing of the winter school. In 1808 he was sent to Brookfield to perfect himself in Latin under the tuition of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Snell, and in 1809 pursued the study of Greek with the Rev Moses Hallock of Plainfield. About this time he began to read Pope's transla- tion of the Iliad, a delightful transition from Dr. Watts' hymns, and it is not surprising that his first serious efforts were some enigmas written

after the manner of this favorite poet. In 1809, he wrote, and his father had published in pamph- let form, a poem entitled, TJie Embargo, or SketcJies of the Times, a Federalist satire attack- ing President Jefferson, then very unpopular because of the enforcement of the embargo laid upon the joorts of the republic. He entered Wil- liams college, Oct. 9, 1810, but before the close of his first jear asked for an honorable dismissal, de.siring to enter Yale. His father's financial position forbade the completion of a college course, and he studied law at Worthington and afterwards at Bridgewater, was admitted to the bar in 1815, began the practice of his profession at Plainfield, Mass., and had been there nearly a year when he entered into partnership with a young lawyer of Great Barrington, Mass. He purchased his partner's interest at the close of a year and continued practice alone, getting him- self described as " an active, learned and rather fiery young lawyer." In 1817 the poem Thana- tojjsis, was published in the September nvnnber of the North American Revieio. It had been writ- ten six years before, shortly after Bryant left college, when he had not attained his eighteenth year ; in the same luimber of the Revieio ap- peared also, under the title of a Fragment, what is now known as An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. The publication of these exquisite poems at that time was due to what might be termed an accident of fortune. In June of 1817, Wiilard Piiillips, an old New Hamp- shire frif nd of the Bryant family, then an associ- ate editor of the North American Review, wrote to Dr. Bryant his desire that William Cullen should contribute to the Revieiv, then in its infancy. Dr. Bryant wrote to his son advising him to accept the offer, but chancing to look through a desk which the young poet had been in the habit of using, he found the MSS. of these incomparable poems and hastened with them to Boston. So instant was the appreciation of his muse on the publication of these lines that he was invited to become a regular contributor to the Revieio, to which, in 1818, he sent a paper on Early American Poetry, and the poem To a Waterfoid. The latter was inspired by an incident thus beautifully related by one of his biographers : " When he journej'ed on foot over the hills to Plainfield on the 15th of December, 1816, to see what inducements it offered him to commence there the i^ractice of the profession to which he had just been licensed, he says in one of liis letters that he felt ' very for- lorn and desolate.' The world seemed to grow bigger and darker as he ascended, and his future more uncertain and desperate. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of those bril- liant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood