Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

Alfred Billings Street

(1811-1881)
New York

Evert A. & George L. Duyckinck, The Cyclopedia of American Literature 435
(Philadelphia: William Rutter & Co., 1880)(Vol. 2)

Lawyer, poet, librarian

Alfred Billings Street was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on December 18, 1811. He studied law with his father, Randall S. Street and they practiced in Monticello, New York. In 1839 he moved to Albany and in 1843 began editing the Northern Night. Street wrote poetry from early in his life and published several collections of his work. Street was a popular poet in the middle 1800s and was frequently called upon to write and present poems celebrating noteworthy events of the day. From 1848 to 1862 he was Director of the New York State Library and then state Law Librarian until 1868. Street died in Albany, New York on June 2, 1881.

Alfred B. Street
Northern Illinois University Libraries

Alfred B. Street
Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Poets and Poetry of America 440-446
(Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1848)
app

Poems

[The Settler] [The Loon]

Poetry

Alfred Billings Street, The Burning of Schenectady, and Other Poems (Albany: W. C. Little & New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1842) [online text]

________________, Drawings and Tintings (New York: Burgess, Stringer, 1844) [online text]

________________, Frontenac, or the Atotarho of the Iroquois, a Metrical Romance (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1849) [online text] (London: R. Bentley 1849) [online text] [text online] (Frontenac A Poem of the Iroquois (Albany, New York: Joel Munsell, 1866)

________________, Our State: A Poem (New York: Jennings & Harrison, printers, 1849)(delivered before the literary societies of the New York University, on the 26th of June, 1849 & published by order of the Philomathean Society) [online text]

________________, The Poems of Alfred B. Street (New York: Clark & Austin, 1847)(New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867) [online text]

John A. Hows, Forest Pictures in the Adirondacks (New York: Gregory, 1865)(1864)(with original poems by Alfred B. Street) [online text]

Writings

Alfred Billings Street, The Council of Revision of the State of New York (Albany, New York: W. Gould, 1859)

_______________, Woods and Waters, or, The Saranacs and Racquet (New York: M. Doolady, 1860) [online text] [online text] (Harrison, New York: Harbor Hill Books, 1976) [online text]

_______________, A Digest of Taxation in the States under three heads. 1. Mode or machinery of taxation; 2. Standard of valuation; 3. Property liable to, and exempt from, taxation (Albany, New York: Weed, Parsons, 1863)

_______________, Memorial of George Van Santvoord (Albany, New York: J. Munsell, 1863)

_______________, The Indian Pass (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1869) [online text] (Fleischmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press, 1993)

Research Resources

Alfred Billings Street Papers
New York State Library
Manuscripts and Special Collections
Albany, New York

Papers of Alfred Billings Street
[poetry, prose, portraits, and a letter to George H. Treadwell]
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.