Thomas Green Fessenden

Background

Thomas G. Fessenden was born on April 22, 1771, in Walpole, New Hampshire, the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Fessenden, the liberal pastor of the Walpole church for forty-seven years, himself an author, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Kendall of New Salem, Massachusetts.

Education

Fessenden was prepared for Dartmouth probably by his Tory grandfather at New Salem, and assisted himself through college by teaching and conducting singing schools. He was graduated valedictorian in 1796.

Career

Fessenden was graduated with some literary reputation for pieces of verse, mainly humorous, contributed over the pen-name "Simon Spunkey" to the Dartmouth Centinel and to the better known Fanner’s Weekly Museum at Walpole, then edited by the essayist Joseph Dennie, with whom he had begun a lasting friendship.

His two most popular poems were "The Country Lovers, " or "Jonathan’s Courtship, " first published as a broadside, probably in 1795, and as a pamphlet in 1796, and "The Rutland Ode. " The former was the prototype and perhaps the model for Lowell’s "The Courtin’. " The latter was a Federalist campaign song, first sung, to music set by the author, at the Fourth of July celebration in 1798 at Rutland, Vermont, where Fessenden was studying law.

In May 1801 Fessenden abandoned his law practise at Rutland and sailed for England as agent for a local company to secure English patent rights for a recently invented hydraulic device, which upon further testing proved fraudulent. He spent the next two years and his remaining funds in London in attempts to perfect this device and a new type of grain-mill.

In February 1803 Fessenden rallied to the defense of another Yankee, Elisha Perkins, whose "metallic tractors, " after enjoying an enormous sale, were being attacked by the reputable medical profession. Fessenden, under the alias "Christopher Caustic, M. D. , LL. D. , A. S. S. ," threw together a vigorous Hudibrastic satire, Terrible Tractoration, a pretended assault on the tractors, but actually ridiculing the most prominent of the skeptical physicians of England and Scotland. Surprisingly popular, and well received in the reviews, and was several times reprinted.

This was followed by his Original Poems (London 1804, Philadelphia 1806), chiefly selections from the Dartmouth and Rutland periods, with some added anti-Jacobin satires and literary parodies.

In July 1804 Fessenden returned, hailed as the American Butler, to Boston, where he wrote and published in 1805, Democracy Unveiled: or Tyranny Stripped of the Garb of Patriotism, the most celebrated and virulent assault on Jefferson and the minor Democratic leaders, coarse and libellous to a degree not tolerable to-day. It is a long poem in six loosely constructed cantos, in Hudibrastic couplets grouped in quatrains, with copious footnotes outweighing the pages of text. Second and third editions, greatly enlarged, appeared later in 1805 at Boston, and in 1806 at New York.

From August 30, 1806, to August 22, 1807, "Dr. Caustic" edited the Weekly Inspector, a Federalist partisan magazine, at New York' where he ran afoul of the youthful Salmagundi group, who ridiculed him as "Dr. Christopher Costive. "

In 1808 or 1809, after a sojourn with Dennie in Philadelphia, Fessenden retired to Brattleboro, Vermont, and entered upon a less eventful but more useful period, practising law; editing the Brattleboro Reporter, 1815 - 1816, and the Bellows Falls Advertiser, 1817 - 1822; and compiling such legal and instructive works as the Essay on the Law of Patents (1810), American Clerk’s Companion (1815), Miniature Bible (1816), and The Ladies’ Monitor (1818).

In July 1822 Fessenden removed to Boston to establish the New England Farmer, editing it until his death, with the assistance of men like Timothy Pickering, John Lowell, and Daniel Webster as contributors. Simultaneously, he carried on three other periodicals devoted to agricultural interests, encouraged the introduction of silk culture in Massachusetts, and got out third and fourth editions of Terrible Tractoration in 1836 and 1837.

In 1827 and 1830 he secured patents for two heating devices, the chief being a portable steam and hot-water stove, virtually a single hot-water radiator attached to an upright stove.

In 1835 and again in 1836, he was elected by a large majority to the Massachusetts General Court as Whig representative from Boston and was a candidate for reelection at the time of his death. For about the last two years of Fessenden’s life Nathaniel Hawthorne, then editor of the American Magasine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, at Boston, was a lodger with the Fessendens, and subsequently be wrote a eulogy which until recently was the best source of information concerning Fessenden. Thomas G. Fessenden died on November 11, 1837, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Achievements

• Thomas Green Fessenden was a poet, journalist, inventor, and the most important American satirist in verse between Trumbull and Lowell.

Works

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  • Terrible tractoration: And other poems

    (This book, "Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems: And O...)

  • The Modern Philosopher: Or, Terrible Tractoration! In Four Cantos, Most Respectfully Addressed to th

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  • The Ladies Monitor: A Poem

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  • Terrible tractoration. A poetical petition against galvanising trumpery, and the Perkinistic institution: in four cantos

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  • An Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions

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  • The Modern Philosopher: Or Terrible Tractoration! In Four Cantos, Most Respectfully Addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, London

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  • The Complete Farmer and Rural Economist: Containing a Compedious Epitome of the Most Important Branches of Agriculture and Rural Economy

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  • The New American Gardener; Containing Practical Directions on the Culture of Fruits and Vegetables; Including Landscape and Ornamental Gardening, Grape-vines, Silk, Strawberries, &c. &c

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  • Horticultural Register, and Gardener's Magazine

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  • The Horticultural Register and Gardener's Magazine Volume 2

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Politics

In 1835 and again in 1836, Thomas G. Fessenden was elected by a large majority to the Massachusetts General Court as Whig representative from Boston and was a candidate for reelection at the time of his death.

Connections

In September 1813, Thomas Fessenden married Miss Lydia Tuttle, of Littleton, Massachusetts.

Father:

Thomas Fessenden

Mother:

Elizabeth Fessenden (Kendall)

Wife:

Lydia Fessenden (Tuttle)

Friend:

Joseph Dennie

Joseph Dennie was an American author and journalist, who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era.