Oliver Wendell Holmes

The New Netherland Ancestors of

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES



Author




       __ABIEL HOLMES2
      |
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES1
      |
      |                    __Evert Janszen Wendell3,7
      |                   |
      |               __Johannes Wendell3,7
      |              |    |
      |              |    |     __Philippe Du Trieux7
      |              |    |    |
      |              |    |__Susanna Du Trieux3,7
      |              |         |
      |              |         |__Susanna du Chesne7
      |              |
      |          __Jacob Wendell3,7
      |         |    |
      |         |    |     __Abraham Staats7,8,9
      |         |    |    |
      |         |    |__Elizabeth Staats3,7
      |         |         |
      |         |         |     __Jochem Wesselszen9
      |         |         |    |
      |         |         |__Tryntje Jochemse7,8,9
      |         |              |
      |         |              |__Geertruy Hieronimus9
      |         |
      |     __Oliver Wendell3
      |    |    |
      |    |    |__Sarah Oliver3,7
      |    |
      |__Sarah Wendell2
	   |
	   |     __Edward Jackson4
	   |    |
	   |__Mary Jackson3
		|
		|     __Edmund Quincy5
		|    |
		|__Dorothy Quincy4
		     |
		     |     __Josiah Flynt6
		     |    |
		     |__Dorothy Flynt5
			  |
			  |     __Thomas Willett6
			  |    |
			  |__Esther Willett6
			       |
			       |__Mary Brown6


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Biography of OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, author, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29 August 1809. Among his schoolmates were Alfred Lee, afterward Bishop of Delaware, Margaret Fuller, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. He was prepared for college at Phillips Andover Academy, where he made his first attempt at versification, a translation from the first book of the Aeneid, in heroic couplets. He was graduated at Harvard in 1829, among his classmates being William H. Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Benjamin R. Curtis. He was a contributor to one of the college periodicals, delivered the poem at commencement, and was one of the sixteen members chosen into the F B K society. The next year, when it was proposed to break up the old frigate "Constitution," Holmes published in the Boston "Advertiser" his lyrical protest, beginning, "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!" which was widely copied in the newspapers and circulated in handbills, saving the ship from destruction and giving the young poet a reputation. He studied law for a year at the law school in Cambridge, and at that time produced some of his best-known humorous pieces, including "Evening by a Tailor" and "The Height of the Ridiculous." In 1833, with Epes Sargent and Park Benjamin, he contributed to a gift-book, entitled "The Harbinger," the profits of which were given to the Asylum for the Blind. But his hereditary instincts appear to have been for the profession of medicine, and he studied under Dr. James Jackson and then spent three years chiefly in Paris. He received his degree in 1836, and in the same year published his first volume of poems (Boston), which contained forty-five pieces, including, besides those already named, "Poetry, a Metrical Essay," read before the B K society: "The Last Leaf"; "My Aunt": "The Treadmill Song"; and "The September Gale." In 1839 he was chosen Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth. In 1840 he married Amelia Lee daughter of Judge Charles Jackson, of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and soon afterward he resigned his professorship at Dartmouth in order to devote himself to practice in Boston. In 1849 he established a summer home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Hawthorne at that time was living at Lenox, a few miles away, and in his "Hall of Fantasy," after describing an ideal group of poets, he says: "In the most vivacious of these I recognized Holmes." In 1847 he succeeded Dr. John C. Warren as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the medical school of Harvard. About the same time he became a lyceum lecturer. Dr. Holmes had gained three of the Boylston prizes for medical dissertations, and his three essays were published together (Boston, 1838). His other scientific works include an edition of "Marshall Hall's Theory and Practice of Medicine," with Dr. Jacob Bigelow (1839); "Lectures on Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions" (1842); "Report on Medical Literature," in the "Transactions" of the National Medical Association (1848); "Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence," a pamphlet (1855); "Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science" (1861); and "Border Lines in some Provinces of Medical Science" (1862). Several of these have been reissued in one volume with the title "Medical Essays" (1883). His successive volumes of poetry have borne the titles "Urania" (1846); "Astraea: the Balance of Illusions" (1850); "Songs in Many Keys" (1861); "Songs of Many Seasons" (1875); and "The Iron Gate" (1880). There are several collected editions, and some of the pieces have been issued singly with sumptuous illustrations. When the "Atlantic Monthly" was established, in the autumn of 1857, Dr. Holmes became one of the first contributors, and by many readers was esteemed the most brilliant of all that notable galaxy. His first contributions were in the form of a series of conversational papers entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," in which were included some of the finest of his poems. The "Autocrat" was followed by a similar series, "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table," and, after an interval, by "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table," each of which on its completion in the magazine was issued in book-form (1859, 1860, 1872). These papers, he tells us in his preface, were the fulfillment of a plan that was conceived twenty-five years before, when he published in the "New England Magazine" two articles with the title of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table." Dr. Holmes also wrote two novels, which were first published serially, "Elsie Venner, a Romance of Destiny" (2 vols., 1861), and "The Guardian Angel" (2 vols., 1868), which are remarkable rather as character-studies than for dramatic power. His other prose works are "Soundings from the Atlantic," a collection of essays (1864); "Mechanism in Thought and Morals" (1871.); memoirs of John Lothrop Motley (1879) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884); "A Mortal Antipathy" (1885); and "Our Hundred Days in Europe" (1887). Dr. Holmes has been successful in every kind of literature that he has undertaken, but his most brilliant and popular work is in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," while his longest lived is probably in his poems. In these the expression is so admirably clear that the reader does not always immediately appreciate the depth of the thought. His own favorite among his serious poems is said to be "The Chambered Nautilus"; but "The Voiceless," "Sun and Shadow," and several of his patriotic lyrics, easily take rank with it. Some of his satirical pieces, like "The Moral Bully," are as sharp as the most merciless critic could desire, while many of his purely humorous ones, like "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay," are already classic. As a poet of occasions it is doubtful if he has ever had an equal. The publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" gave a breakfast in his honor on his seventieth birthday, 29 August 1879, at which many literary celebrities were present, and he read his poem of "The Iron Gate," written for the occasion. His life has been written by Walter S. Kennedy (Boston, 1883), and also by Emma E. Brown (1884), in a volume to which is appended a complete bibliography of his publications.
 

 


Notes and Sources


   1.  Flint, Edward F., S.M., and Gwendolyn S. Flint, Flint Family History of
       The Adventuresome Seven, Volume II.  Baltimore:  Gateway Press, Inc.,
       1984.  844.
   2.  Ibid., p. 724.
   3.  Ibid., p. 655-656.  See also p. 606.
   4.  Ibid., p. 607-608.
   5.  Ibid., p. 578=579.
   6.  Ibid., p. 569-570.
   7.  Randolph, Howard, S.R., "The House of Truax," The New York Genealogical
       and Biographical Record, 57 (1926):  208-219, 336-344; 58 (1927):  76-81,
       111-116, 267-272, 326-331; 59 (1928):  17-26, 182-190, 289-293, 386-395.
   8.  Riker, David M., Genealogical and Biographical Directory to Persons
       in New Netherland from 1613 to 1674.  CD-ROM. Cambridge: The
       Learning Company, 1999.  1329.
   9.  Ibid., p. 1762.


 

First uploaded 29 April 2002

Last Modified  Saturday, 08-Sep-2018 18:03:15 MDT

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