Author: Semmes, Thomas
Biography:
SEMMES, Thomas (1812-43: ancestry.com)
Poems by a Collegian (1833), published anonymously, is variously and confidently attributed to both Thomas Semmes and William Gilmore Simms (q.v.) but Semmes is almost certainly correct. He was born in Alexandria VA, the son of Dr. Thomas Middleton Semmes and his wife Sophia Wilson Potts. He graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville where the book of verse dedicated to "My Father," was printed. The Preface indicates that most of the pieces included had been previously published in "journals of the day"; the same is true of his prose Essays on American Literature (1838), which consists of reprints of three articles originally published in the university's student periodical, The Collegian. Semmes went on to become a lawyer with a practice in Alexandria. He married Eliza Frances Bernard and they had at least one son, Col. Thomas Middleton Semmes (1840-1904). He died young in Alexandria, the cause of death not known, and is buried in Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery there. (ancestry.com 8 Sept. 2020; WorldCat; Benjamin Blake Minor, ed., The Southern Literary Messenger, 1834-1864, 19)