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Do You Remember?
"Henry B. Dawson, Early Newspaperman and Historian"
Tom
Casey provided this image of
Henry B. Dawson. |
(Reprinted
from the
Bronx Times Reporter on March 10, 2005)
Henry Barton Dawson, an
early Morrisania resident, wrote numerous historical essays and
a number of history books. He was born on June 8, 1821 at
Gosberton in Lincolnshire, England and immigrated to the United
States on June 9, 1834 at age thirteen. The family settled in
upper Manhattan where his father found employment as a gardener
at the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum. Henry would work with his
father there and elsewhere at that trade before being
apprenticed as a wheelwright. He later would find a job as a
clerk, moving from firm to firm acquiring a vast amount of
knowledge and contacts.
He had loaned some money to the proprietor of a weekly magazine
called The Crystal Fount in 1845 and when the loan could
not be repaid, he found himself in the writing and publishing
business. Although that magazine would eventually fail, it did
give him a reputation for writing, which would lead to other
opportunities. He wrote "The Park and its Vicinity" for the
Common Council of New York City in 1855, "The Life and Times of
Anne Hutchinson" for the Baptist Historical Society, and "The
Retreat through Westchester County in 1776" for the New-York
Historical Society.
His first book was written at the request of Messrs. Johnson,
Fry and Company, publishers, in 1856. It was entitled "The
Battles of the United States by Sea and Land" and was released
as a serial in forty parts; the initial number appeared in the
fall of 1858. He then worked on a seven-volume set on the
Constitution of the United States. Numerous other works would
follow.
This was followed by a stint as editor of The Gazette, a
Yonkers weekly. The following year, 1866, he purchased The
Historian magazine. In 1868 Joseph Shannon and F. J. Twomey,
Esq. of "The Manual of the New York Common Council" invited him
to pursue historical subjects therein. Among the papers
submitted for this publication was one on the Battle of Harlem
Heights.
An 1871-2 Morrisania directory lists Henry Dawson's occupation
as historian and his house as being located on the north side of
Home Street, the first house east of Boston Road. His son, Henry
Jr. is listed as a printer at that same location. Henry had
eight other children and one adopted child with is wife,
Catherine. A Bronx street was named for him in 1894. Part of it
has since been demapped for the construction of the John Adams
Houses but a section of it still remains in the Longwood section
of our borough to remind us of this early Bronx historian.
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