Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/148

 WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER William Davis Gallagher was bom in Philadelphia, August, 1808. His father was an Irishman, who emigrated from his native country because he had been a participant in the rebellion, on account of which Robert Emmett was a martyr. His mother was a daughter of one of the band of " Jersey Blues," distinguished in the War for American Independence. In 1816, Mrs. Gallagher, then a widow, removed, with four sons, of whom William was the third, from Philadelphia to Cincinnati. He was put on a farm, where he worked three years, attending a district school three months each winter. He was comparatively an industrious pupil, but was known as a boy who loved to hold communion with trees, rocks, flowers, and brooks, better than to con lessons or recite tasks in the school-room. In 1821, William was apprenticed to a printer in Cincinnati. He was distinguished among his companions as a student of literature, and in 1824, while yet an apprentice, published for several months a small literary paper, the contents of which were chiefly from his pen. He became then a constant contributor to several journals, writing essays and poems over vari- ous pseudonymes. In 1827, Mr. Gallagher and Otway Curry — as " Roderick " and " Abdallah " — ^maintained a friendly rivalry in the columns of the Cincinnati Chron- icle and Cincinnati Sentinel, which was the occasion of much inquiry and many false charges of authorship. Mr. Gallagher was not kno^vn as a writer till 1828, when, during a journey through Kentucky and Mississippi, he wrote a series of popular letters, which were published in the Cincinnati Saturday Evening Chronicle. Two years later he became the editor of the Backwoodsman, published at Xenia, Ohio, a vigorous advocate of Henry Clay as a candidate for President of the United States. Literature was, however, more congenial than politics; and when, in 1831, John H. Wood, at that time a bookseller in Cincinnati, projected a literary periodical, and invited Mr. Gallagher to take the editorial charge of it, the invitation was promptly accepted. As soon as the necessary arrangements were completed, the Cincinnati 3Iirror, the fourth literary paper published west of the Alleghany Mountains, made its appearance. It was in its externals superior to any previous periodical of that city. It was a small quarto of eight pages, printed semi-monthly on fine paper with beautiful type. In all its departments the most scrupulous order and propriety were observed. The Mirror acquired a high reputation, and its circulation in the Mississippi Valley was, for the period in which it flourished, very extensive. At the beginning of the third year, Mr. Gallagher was joined in the enterprise by Thos. H. Shreve, and the proprietor- ship as well as the editorship of the paper passed into the hands of these friends. ( 132 )