Author: Percival, James Gates
Biography:
PERCIVAL, James Gates (1795-1856: ANBO)
The polymathic Percival was the son of a village doctor, James Percival, and his wife Elizabeth Hart; the family lived in Kensington CT. After the death of his father in 1807 he was sent to a boarding school where he began to write poetry seriously. At Yale he studied natural sciences and graduated BA in 1815, MD in 1820. After a devastating rejection by a woman in 1820, he appears to have given up thoughts of marriage. Though he opened a medical practice in Kensington, his interests shifted increasingly from medicine to literature, and in the 1820s he gained a high reputation among critics and his fellow-poets. For a living away from medicine he turned to editing and translation; he was for a time Noah Webster's assistant on his American Dictionary. In 1835, on the recommendation of one of his Yale professors, he was appointed State Geologist of Connecticut, a position he held until 1842. His last book of poetry, The Dream of a Day, appeared in 1843. For some years he travelled as a consultant and surveyor. From 1854 to 1856 he was State Geologist of Wisconsin; he died in Hazel Green WI. (ANBO 18 June 2020) HJ
Other Names:
- James G. Percival