| Elijah Whitter Blaisdell
Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography "BLAISDELL, ELIJAH WHITTIER, lawyer, state legislator, author, poet, was born July 18, 1826, in Montpelier, Vt. In 1854 he moved to Rockford, Ill.; participated with Abraham Lincoln in the formation of the republican party in 1856; and was the first editor in the United States who raised his name for the presidency of the United States. He canvassed the state of Illinois for General Grant and Governor Oglesby; and was afterward a Cleveland elector. He was a candidate for congress three times in the sixth district of Illinois; was a member of the Illinois state legislature in 1859 and 1860; and has taken an active part in the public affairs of his city, county and state. For twenty years he was an editor; and for fifteen years has been a lawyer. He is the author of a successful story entitled The Hidden Record; a drama entitled Sliabbona; The Rajah, a burlesque poem; Eva, the General's Daughter, a drama in blank verse; and a volume of poems." [Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century 119 (Chicago: American Publishers' Assoc., 1898)] [John McAuley Palmer, in The Bench and Bar of Illinois 959 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1899)(vol. 2), ) indicates that Blaisdell "is now about to issue a voluem of miscellaneous poems, of two hundred and fifty or three hundred pages . . ." but we have not, to date, been able to locate the book. There is no listing in OCLC of such a volume.] Verse E.W. Blaisdell, The Rajah, or, The Great Presidential Sporting Excursion of 1883: A Burlesque in Four Cantos (1884) Writings E.W. Blaisdell, The Hidden Record; or, The Old Sea Mystery, a Novel (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, 1882) |
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