|
William Henry Sparks "A Mississippi planter, after 1850 a lawyer of New Orleans, who published Memories of Fifty Years. He was a popular verse-writer, his best known poems being, Somebody's Darling; [&] The Dying Year." [Oscar Fay Adams, A Dictionary of American Authors 353-54 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899)] W.H. Sparks was born on January 16, 1800 on St. Simon's Island, Georgia and raised in Greene County, Georgia. He studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut and took up the practice of law in Greensboro where he served in the state legislature. In 1830, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi where he became a sugar planter. Then, in 1850, he moved to New Orleans where he resumed the practice of law in partnership with Judah P. Benjamin. He was the author of "much poetry." [Source: James B. Lloyd (ed.), Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967 415 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981)] [See also: Herringhsaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century 874 (Chicago: American Publishers' Assoc., 1898). He died, according to Herringshaw, January 13, 1882, in Marietta, Georgia.] Writings W.H. Sparks, The Memories of Fifty Years: containing brief biographical notices of distinguished Americans, and anecdotes of remarkable men; interspersed with scenes and incidents occurring during a long life of observation chiefly spent in the Southwest (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelinger, 1870)(Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger / Macon, Georgia: J. W. Burke, 1870)(3rd ed., 1872) [online text] (4th ed., 1882) |
|