William Leete Stone Sr.

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
William Leete Stone
Signature

William Leete Stone (20 April 1792 New Paltz, New York (or 1793 Esopus, New York[1]) – 15 August 1844 Saratoga Springs, New York), known as Colonel Stone, was an influential journalist, publisher, author, and public official in New York City. His name also appears as "Leet".[1]

Biography

His father, William, was a soldier of the Revolution and afterward a Presbyterian clergyman, who was a descendant of colonial

Sodus, New York
, in 1808, where he assisted his father in the care of a farm. The country was at that time a wilderness, and the adventures of young Stone during his early pioneer life formed material that he afterward wrought into border tales.

At the age of seventeen, he became a printer in the office of the

Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), Isaac Toucey
, and himself alternated in editing a literary magazine called The Knights of the Round Table. At Hudson, he also edited The Lounger, a literary periodical which was noted for its pleasantry and wit.

In 1821 he succeeded

Zachariah Lewis as editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, becoming at the same time one of its proprietors, which place he held for the rest of his life. As such, he was a defendant in a famous suit brought by the novelist James Fenimore Cooper
for criticisms that had appeared in the Commercial Advertiser on that novelist's Home as Found and the History of the Navy.

Stone always advocated the

Anti-abolitionist riots (1834).[5]

In 1824, his sympathies were strongly enlisted in behalf of the

Marquis de Lafayette on a trip up the Hudson River on the steam boat James Kent during Lafayette's tour through the United States.[6] Brown University gave him the degree of A.M.
in 1825.

Soon after the disappearance of William Morgan and the subsequent controversy around Freemasonry, Stone, who was a Freemason, addressed a series of letters on "Masonry and Anti-Masonry" to John Quincy Adams, who in his retirement at Quincy had taken interest in the anti-Masonic movement. In these letters, which were afterward collected and published (New York, 1832), the author maintained that Masonry should be abandoned, chiefly because it had lost its usefulness.

Although the influence of Colonel Stone (as he was familiarly called as he held that rank on Governor

juvenile delinquents
.

In 1838 he originated and introduced a resolution in the

New York Historical Society directing a memorial to be addressed to the New York legislature praying for the appointment of an historical mission to the governments of England and the Netherlands for the recovery of such papers and documents as were essential to a correct understanding of the colonial history of the state. This was the origin of the collection known as the New York Colonial Documents made by John Romeyn Brodhead, who was sent abroad for that purpose by Governor William H. Seward in the spring of 1841. He also, as one biographer put it, "cleared away the mists of slander that had gathered around the name of De Witt Clinton, and by preserving strict impartiality he secured that credence which no ex parte
argument could obtain, however ingenious."

In 1841 he was appointed by President William Henry Harrison minister to the Hague, but was later recalled by President John Tyler.

Colonel Stone was appointed a chief of the

Seneca Nation of Indians.[7] He also gave lectures at Union College in Schenectady, New York on "the evils of the use of tobacco."[2] He was noted for investigating the claims of Maria Monk
.

He was burlesqued by Laughton Osborn in The Vision of Rubeta, a satire in the classical style. Osborn had been displeased by a critical review by Stone of an earlier work of his.[8]

Family

Stone was married to Susannah Wayland, sister of the President of Brown University, Doctor Francis Wayland.[2][9] Their only son, William Leete Stone Jr., was also a historical writer on the times of the American Revolution.

Works

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Blake, John Lauris (1859). A Biographical Dictionary. H. Cowperthwait & Company. p. 1086. Retrieved April 3, 2016. william leet stone.
  2. ^ a b c Hall, David Brainard (1883). The Halls of New England. J. Munsell's Sons. p. 58. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
  3. ^ Leete, Edward L. (1884). The family of William Leete. New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor. p. 62. Retrieved Dec 15, 2021.
  4. ^ Adams, Alice Dana, The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America, Radcliffe 1908
  5. ^ Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery, Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
  6. ^ Weed, Thurlow; Weed, Harriet A. edt; Barnes, Thurlow Weed; White, Andrew Dickson (1883). Life of Thurlow Weed including his autobiography and a memoir. Cornell University Library. Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin and Co.
  7. ^ Shea, John G. (1865). The Historical Magazine: And Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America, Volume 9. C.B. Richardson. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  8. ^ Osborn, Laughton (1938). The vision of Rubeta, an epic of the island of Manhattan. Boston: Weeks, Jordan, and Company. Retrieved August 15, 2016.
  9. ^ "Mrs. William Leete Stone Sr. (1798–1852)". New York Historical Society. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Leete_Stone_Sr.&oldid=1226453759"