Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

James Elliott

(1775-1839)
Vermont

"A lawyer of Brattleboro, Vermont, of much local prominence."

[Oscar Fay Adams, A Dictionary of American Authors 482 (New York:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 5th ed., 1904]

"He was born at Gloucester, Mass., Aug. 18, 1775. His father dying at sea when he was an infant, his mother moved to New Salem, near her relatives. He worked in a store at age seven, but at age fourteen he migrated north to Guilford, Vt., continuing at the same vocation. A natural student, he gave much time to reading and discussion. In 1783 he enlisted as a petty officer in the national army. He served with honor, and returned to Guilford in August 1796. Here he kept store, studied law, and began practising in 1800, with his brother Samuel as partner. At Brattleboro, where he now lived, he married Lucy Dow, by whom he had two children. He was clerk of the Vermont House of Representatives (1801-2); Representative to Congress (1803-9); member of the Vermont House (1818-19); Clerk of Windham County Court (1819-20 and 1826-36); Register of Probate (1822-34); States Attorney (1837-8). He died Nov. 10, 1839. He was an ardent Jeffersonian Democrat, but a firm friend of William Henry Harrison, with whom he had served in the Indian wars."

[Walter John Coates (ed.), A Bibliography of Vermont Poetry and Gazetteer of Vermont Poets 125-126 (Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society, 1942)] [Vol. 1] [Vol. 2, apparently, was never published] [Used with the permission of the Vermont Historical Society][See, also, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography]

James Elliot
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Poetry

James Elliott, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works of James Elliott citizen of Guilford, Vermont, and late a noncommissioned officer in the Legion of the United States: in four books (Greenfield, Massachusetts: Printed by Thomas Dickman, for the author, 1798)

Bibliography

Eugene L. Huddleston, Indians and Literature of the Federalist Era: The Case of James Elliott, 44 New England Quarterly 221-237 (June, 1971)