George Alfred Townsend
George Alfred Townsend (January 30, 1841 – April 15, 1914) was an American journalist and novelist. He worked as a
Life and career
Townsend was born in
Immediately following the war, he married Elizabeth Evans Rhodes of
In 1884 Townsend began building a baronial estate in the
His novels included The Entailed Hat (1884), which fictionalized a true story of a woman named Patty Cannon who kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery. Townsend's other works include the short story collection Tales of the Chesapeake (1880) and the novel Katy of Catoctin (1887).[1]
The Gapland estate is now Gathland State Park. Several buildings still stand, including Gapland Hall (which is the park headquarters) and the mausoleum.
Townsend left Gapland in 1911, and died three years later in New York City. He was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. The site was given to the State of Maryland and in 1949 became Gathland State Park.
Notes
- ^ ISBN 0-19-503186-5
- Dick and Fitzgerald. p. iii.
- ^ Johnson, Rossiter and John H. Brown, The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Boston, 1904.
References
- Gathland State Park, Maryland Park Service
- Historical Marker Database
External links
- George Alfred Townsend Collection at University of Delaware Library
- Works by George Alfred Townsend at Project Gutenberg
- Works by George Alfred Townsend at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by or about George Alfred Townsend at Internet Archive
- Works by George Alfred Townsend at Google Books (scanned books original editions illustrated)
- George Alfred Townsend Works