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John Patch "MR. PATCH was born in Ipswich, Mass., August 23, 1807, and was son of John and Judith (Corning) Patch. He attended Dummer Academy and Phillips Academy, and graduated at Bowdoin College in 1831, being a classmate of the poet Longfellow. He afterward studied Greek and German at Harvard University, subsequently entering the law school, where he graduated in the class with Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1835, having been for a while in the office of Hon. Theophilus Parsons, in Boston. He immediately opened an office in that city, afterward removing to Nantucket, and later to Beverly. In 1847, he resumed his practice in Boston, and the same year became editor of the Literary Museum. In 1849, he went to California as attorney for a Boston company, and, becoming enamored with the climate and magnificent scenery there, took up his abode at San Francisco, where he practised law with fair success until 1853, when he returned to his native town. Before the close of that year his health failed and he again went to California, where he remained until 1856, when he returned to Ipswich to care for his father in his declining years, residing on his father's farm during the remainder of his life. He was passionately fond of nature; and his poetry was similar to Wordsworth's. He was an intelligent writer, a Unitarian in his religious belief, and somewhat eccentric in his habits. He died at his home in Ipswich, after a long illness, September 11, 1887, at the age of eighty." [Sidney Perley, The Poets of Essex County, Massachusetts 120-121 (Salem, Massachusetts: Sidney Perley, 1889] [Patch sometimes wrote under the pseudonym, A Boston Amateur Poet][See, William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises 518 (T.Y. Crowell, 1885)] Poetry John Patch, The Poet's Offering (Boston: G.W. Light, 1842)(Boston: Philips & Sampson, 1847) [online text] |
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