Author: Scott, Moses Y.
Biography:
SCOTT, Moses Y. (1795-1826: ancestry.com)
Born in Greenfield, Saratoga County, New York, Moses Younglove Scott was the son of Marcia (Younglove) and John Walker Scott. No further details have been found about his family or schooling, but he had a good enough education to have started out with a burst of energy as a writer in New York City in 1819. After contributing some poems to magazines such as The Ladies' Literary Cabinet, he published two poems in November of that year, The Fatal Jest and (for the benefit of a school for the deaf and dumb) The Deaf and Dumb; then in December he became co-founder and Editor of a semi-weekly newspaper, the New York Messenger. The paper unfortunately lasted only a few months. By July 1820 he was declared an insolvent debtor and the Census for that year shows him resident in Waterford, Saratoga, NY. A year later, as Principal of an academy in New York City, he was recommending "grammatical instruction on the American system." From schoolteaching he moved on to the stage, first in New York for three years as a member of Caldwell's troupe and then in New Orleans, where he was engaged by the American Theatre. He died in New Orleans of "bilious fever." (ancestry.com 5 Sept. 2020; New York Daily Advertiser 10 Jul. 1820; Columbian [New York] 11 Jun. 1821; City Gazette [Charleston SC] 18 May 1826; Evening Post [New York] 22 May 1826) HJ