STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY

(1825-1903), an American poet and writer, 6. in Hingham, Ma . As a boy he worked in an iron foundry, but devoting his leisure time to reading he later was employed in the customs service and during 1870-3 was private secretary to General McClellan, Afterwards he was a book reviewer on the New York World. Already in 1848 he had begun to write, both verse and prose. Among his books are Footprints, 1849; Songs of Summer, 1856; Putnam the Brave, 1869; A Memoir of Edgar Allen Poe, 1875, and Under the Evening Lamp, 1893. (1835), author and journalist; 6. Homer,.Y. He graduated from Rochester College in 1858, whereupon he took up newspaper work and farming in Illinois. He was President Lincoln’s secretary from 1861 to 1864, and later after serving as U.S. Marshal in Arkansas, embarked on 2 long career of authorship that extended from 1870 to 1914, his voluminous works embracing verse, biography, fiction and adventure stories. He was one of Lincoln’s biographers and for a time became devoted to inventions, of which he patented nine.