Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/31

Rh LIEUTENANT FLETCHER S. BASSETT.

The organization and conduct of the World's Folk-Lore Congress of 1893 was so largely the work of the late Lieutenant Fletcher S. Bassett that any publication of the proceedings of that Congress would be deemed incomplete without some biographical notice of him. The following brief sketch is therefore given, with the belief that it will be read with interest by all the participants in the Congress.

Mr. Bassett was born in Adams County, in the State of Kentucky, of the United States of America, on December 21st, 1847. He entered Monmouth College, in the State of Illinois, early in the year 1863. The great American Civil War was then in progress, and in May, 1864, Mr. Bassett left college and enlisted as a volunteer in Company A of the 188th Regiment of the Illinois Volunteers. On September 21, 1865, he left the military service and entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, in the State of Maryland, as a midshipman. He graduated from this institution in June, 1869, and was promoted to the position of ensign in July, 1870. In this capacity he served on the staff of Admiral John Rodgers, on the Asiatic Station, and commanded a section of howitzers in the attacks on the forts of the Kaughra Islands below Seoul, the capital of Corea. In 1871 Mr. Bassett served in the American squadron in the North Atlantic Ocean, and later during the same year in the South Pacific Ocean squadron, and was promoted to the office of Lieutenant in June, 1875. He was placed on the Naval Retired List in 1882.

Lieut. Bassett began his literary work while in college, and was constantly employed on it, in some form, to the date of his death. He did a great deal of newspaper correspondence and wrote numerous magazine articles, both of a technical and literary character, and did a considerable amount of professional writing for naval and military journals. He also assisted in the preparation of Hammersly's Naval Encyclopedia. His first book was published in 1885, and was entitled "Legends and Superstitions of the Sea." It was simultaneously issued in London and Chicago. This work opened a new and fascinating field of research and was highly appreciated in the literary and scholastic world. It directed many other minds to the same lines of investigation, and has been acknowledged as an original and authentic treatise of the subject to which it relates. It has already passed through two editions.

In 1892, Lieut. Bassett published "The Folk-Lore Manual;" or Questionnaire of the Folk-Lore Society. Lieut. Bassett, through an