Author: Mellen, Grenville
Biography:
MELLEN, Grenville (1799-1841: WBIS)
Mellen was a successful poet in his day but many of his works appeared in ephemeral periodicals and only his prose Book of the United States (1836) continued to be reprinted into the 1850s. He was born to Sarah (Hudson) and Prentiss Mellen in Biddeford ME; his father, a lawyer, shortly afterward became a judge in Portland, where Grenville went to school. He graduated from Harvard in 1818 and began his legal studies at Harvard Law School, finishing off in his father's law office. After being called to the bar in Maine, he established a practice in North Yarmouth in 1823. In 1824 he married Mary King Southgate, but she died in 1829 not long after the death of their only child. He spent a few years in Boston, then moved to New York. As his health declined, he travelled to Cuba in 1840 but returned in 1841 to New York, where he died of consumption. (Appleton; DAB; ancestry.com 9 Apr. 2020) HJ