William Cullen Bryant's Sketch of His Father in American Biography (1833)

INSamuel Lorenzo Knapp's American Biography, the ninety-line unsigned study of Dr. Peter Bryant is one of the best.1 Terse and factual, it nevertheless has warmth which suggests a knowledgeable affection between the author and the subject. One is not surprised, then, to learn that the sketch was probably the work of a son, namely William Cullen Bryant, writing about his late father. Putting together his several biographical collections, Knapp got help from any sources he could, a situation which he made clear in his preface to American Biography.2 In fact, he credited John Wakefield Francis, a New York physician and cultural benefactor, with securing much of the volume's content relating to the medical profession.3 Both Knapp and Francis were personally acquainted with the younger Bryant in New York City in the early I830s; it is reasonable to suppose that either could have appealed to Bryant's filial instincts with a request for an anonymous biographical piece on his father. While Francis was an especially close friend of William Cullen's,4 Knapp had known Peter Bryant in Massachusetts earlier in the century and might have had a greater interest in preserving his renown.5 Whatever the origin may have been, when the sketch appeared in American Biography it carried no individual author

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