Frank Vincent

Background

Frank Vincent was born on April 2, 1848, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Harriet (Barns) and Frank Vincent, a member of the dry goods firm of Vincent, Clark & Company, in New York City.

Education

Vincent's father had an estate at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson and sent his son to the Peekskill Military Academy and, in 1866, to Yale College. Lack of health caused him to leave college at the end of his second term and another attempt in 1867 proved equally abortive; but Yale conferred upon him, in 1875, an honorary degree of M. A. , and he was later, in 1905, enrolled with his old class, 1870, as a graduate member.

Career

Undiscouraged by the apparent failure of his formal education, Vincent resolved to "survey the entire field of literature, science, and art in famous standard and epoch-making books"; and "to make a systematic tour of the most interesting parts of the world" and to write of the less frequented and less known countries. These ambitions he later considered fulfilled.

Vincent claimed, in the fifteen years from 1871 to 1886, to have traveled 355, 000 miles "over the entire world" and alone to have crossed Lapland and to have penetrated 1, 000 miles into Brazil, where he discovered the double cataract of the Iguana. In those days, few Americans ventured beyond the usual European tour, and Vincent was acclaimed a Marco Polo, while his lucid and lively, though careless, style was admired by Longfellow and others of the New England school.

Probably it is the first of his books that has remained the most readable, The Land of the White Elephant (1874), describing his adventures in 1871-72 in Cambodia, Siam, and Burma, entertainingly illustrated with numerous maps, plans, and engravings. With sketchbook in hand, camera and diary also, armed with letters to the influential, he wandered Herodotus-like, ceaselessly asking questions, setting down wonders and facts, hobnobbing with kings, premiers, high priests, or exploring fearlessly and with good-natured acceptance of hardship.

It was not only the culinary arts and more obvious customs that he recorded; native ideas and emotions found in him a sympathetic, though superficial, interpreter. If there is an absence of the scientific spirit in sifting his information, the impression left on the reader is all the more vivid. From these lands, chiefly from Cambodia, he brought home a collection of antiquities and more recent art objects in bronze, lacquer, stone, and painted wood, including fragments of Buddha statues, about 1, 000 years old, from the great temple of Nagkon Wat.

These he gave, in 1885, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and thus became a patron (now known as fellow-in-perpetuity). For over twenty years, he wrote successfully for publication.

Achievements

• Frank Vincent has been listed as a notable traveler, author by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

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  • The Animal World, Its Romances and Realities. A Reading-Book of Zoo¨Logy

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • The Plant World

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Actual Africa;

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Around and about South America

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Personality

Vincent's personality was eager, almost aggressive.

Connections

On June 3, 1909, when sixty-one, Vincent married a distant cousin, Harriet Stillman Vincent of Brooklyn. They had no children.

They made their home in New York City, but he died in Woodstock, New York, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Tarrytown.

Father:

Frank Vincent

29 February 1812 - 6 September 1889

Mother:

Harriet Barns Vincent

1824 - 26 September 1850

Brother:

Edwin Vincent

1849 - 23 December 1916

Sister:

Harriet B. Vincent

1846 - 25 Nov 1928

Wife:

Harriet Stillman Vincent

1 September 1873 - 11 August 1929