Author: Lofland, John
Biography:
LOFLAND, John (1798-1849: ancestry.com)
"The Milford Bard" was born on 17 Mar. 1798 in Milford DE, the son of Isaac Lofland, a merchant, and his third wife Cynthia Virden. He was a keen reader of literature, though a reluctant student in other subjects; he began composing poetry when he was 12. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for three years, intending to become a doctor, but he was expelled and left without qualifications. (He is nevertheless sometimes referred to as "Dr." Lofland.) After an early disappointment in love, he remained a bachelor. He contributed extensively to periodicals in Philadelphia (including the Saturday Evening Post) and then later in Baltimore, where he lived from 1838 to 1846, and in Wilmington (1846-9), where he died on 22 Jan. 1849 and is buried alongside one of his sisters. In Wilmington, he edited a literary journal, The Blue Hen's Chicken. He was an opium addict for 20 years. A friend in publishing, John Murphy, brought him freelance work. Murphy was also the publisher of a collected edition of Lofland's work--a selection over 550 pages long--produced with a memoir by Lofland's friend J. N. McJilton in 1853. The memoir includes striking accounts by Lofland himself of some of the hallucinations he experienced as an addict. (ancestry.com 3 July 2025; J. N. McJilton, ed., The Poetical and Prose Writings of Dr. John Lofland, the Milford Bard [1853]; W. M. Leonard, The Life of John Lofland [1894]) HJ