Benson John Lossing
Collection
SC19618

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Biographical Note | Scope and Contents | Container List

Biographical Note:

Benson John Lossing, editor, illustrator, and historian, was born, February 12, 1813 in Beekman, Dutchess County, New York. Orphaned in 1824, Lossing moved to Poughkeepsie about two years later to work for Adam Henderson, watchmaker and silversmith. By 1823, Lossing and Henderson formed a partnership. In 1835, Lossing became part owner and editor of the Poughkeepsie Telegraph. Out of this publication grew the semi-monthly literary paper called the Poughkeepsie Casket, which Lossing helped illustrate with wood engravings. Lossing moved to New York City in 1838 to establish himself in the wood engraving profession, yet he continued to supply the Telegraph with his engravings and designs. While he edited and illustrated J.S. Rothchild's weekly Family Magazine, from 1839 to 1841, he also launched his own literary career with the publication of his Outline of the History of Fine Arts. In 1846, he joined William Barritt in the wood engraving business that became one of the largest of such firms in New York. His illustrations appeared in the New York Mirror and several other periodicals.

Around 1848, Lossing conceived of the idea of writing a narrative sketchbook on the American Revolution. The first installment was published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1850, but three years passed before the completed Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution was published. To gather material for the work, Lossing traveled more than 8,000 miles throughout the United States and Canada. The book was critically acclaimed and won him a wide reputation. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Lossing toured the South; after the war he published a three-volume pictorial field book/history of the war. In 1860-1861, the London Art Journal featured a series of his articles describing the history and scenery of the Hudson Valley; the articles, with pen-and-pencil sketches, were published in 1866 under the title The Hudson: From the Wilderness to the Sea.

In 1868, Lossing moved to Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York, where he had a fireproof library constructed to house a collection of over five thousand books. Lossing was actively involved in several charitable, civic, literary, and historical clubs and societies in Dutchess County. Lossing married Alice Barritt, daughter of Thomas Barritt, on June 18, 1833; she died in 1855. On November 18, 1856, he married Helen Sweet, the daughter of Nehemiah Sweet. Benson Lossing died June 3, 1891, in Dover Plains.

Scope and Contents Note:

This collection is comprised mostly of correspondence of Benson Lossing that relates to his varied career endeavors and interests mentioned in the preceding biographical sketch. His correspondents represent a who's who in arts, education, history, literature, journalism, writing, editing, publishing, law, government, and politics. They include Joel Benton, Albert Smith Bickmore, Henry B. Dawson, John A. Dix, Samuel Adams Drake, Theodore Dwight, Harvey Gridley Eastman, Joel Tyler Headley, Franklin B. Hough, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Horatio Seymour. The contents of the letters are concerned generally with Lossing's research and writings. Many of these letters also contain comments on political and social issues of the Civil War and the subsequent Reconstruction era. One letter that is especially interesting was written by Julia Clinton Jones, daughter of DeWitt Clinton, who described her experiences of living in Helena, Montana, when the place was still a frontier settlement. Other letters of note include those from New York State Library officials regarding materials in its holdings related to the American Revolution.

In addition to correspondence, this collection contains a manuscript facsimile of President Abraham Lincoln's draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, 1 January 1863. The original manuscript was destroyed in the 1871 Chicago fire. Other items of note are drafts of Lossing's articles and assorted research notes; a sketchbook, ca. 1830s, that contains drawings that appear to have been take-offs of works done by famous artists like Asher B. Durand, and a diary, 1855-1856, of Helen Lossing, that contains comments on lectures attended, Friends meetings, discovery of Revolutionary War manuscripts at Kingston, the raising of the West Point chain, and reminiscences of her father regarding Revolutionary War officers.

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