The New International Encyclopædia/Fessenden, Thomas Green

FESSENDEN, (1771-1837). An American writer. He was born at Walpole, N. H., and graduated at Dartmouth in 1796. He was for some time in London engaged in an enterprise which ruined him financially, and while there advertised the metallic tractors of Benjamin D. Perkins (q.v.) in a grotesque poem entitled Terrible Tractoration (1803), a satire upon the medical profession which opposed the use of the instruments. In 1822 he started in Boston the New England Farmer, with which he was connected until his death. For two years he was editor of the Weekly Inspector in New York City. Among his further works are: Pills, Poetical, Political, and Philosophical, Prescribed for the Purpose of Purging the Public of Piddling Philosophers, Penny Poetasters, of Paltry Politicians, and Petty Partisans, by Peter Pepperbox, Poet and Physician (1809); Democracy Unveiled (1806); American Clerk's Companion (1815); The Ladies' Monitor (1818); and Laws of Patents for New Inventions (1822). Consult Hawthorne, Fanshawe, and Other Pieces (Boston, 1876).