William Henry Bishop papers

William Henry Bishop, B.A. 1867.

Born January 7, 1847, in Hartford, Conn.

Died September 26, 1928, in Brooklyn, Conn.

Father, Elias Bishop; son of John and Harriet (Heminway) Bishop; descendant of Governor James Bishop of the New Haven Colony, and of John Bishop, a founder of Guilford, Conn., in 1639; descendant also of Major Moses Mansfield, who married Abigail, sister of Elihu Yale. Mother, Catherine (Kelley) Bishop. Yale relatives include the Rev. Jacob Heminway (B.A. 1704) (great-great-great-uncle), the first and for some months the only student of Yale College.

Hartford Public High School and preparatory department of St. John's College, Fordham, N. Y. Entered Yale as a Sophomore in 1864; prize for English poem in Sophomore year; Class poet; an editor of Yale Courant; member of Yale Crew, Linonia (president), Kappa Sigma Epsilon, Delta Beta Xi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon; graduate member of Wolf's Head.

Studied architecture in office of Peter B. Wight, in New York City; art critic on New York Evening Post; draftsman in office of Government architect in Washington; editor and proprietor of Milwaukee Journal of Commerce (with his classmate, Henry A. Chittenden) 1873-1875, and of Milwaukee Daily Commercial Times 1875-1877; subsequently traveled in Mexico and abroad; lived in France 1888-1893; instructor in French and Spanish at Yale 1893-1903; American consul at Genoa, Italy, 1903-1904, and at Palermo, Italy, 1905-1910, when he resigned; awarded medal of honor by King of Italy, for services in aiding sufferers during the Messina earthquake in 1908; since 1910 had lived in the United States, and of late years in Brooklyn, Conn., and devoted his time largely to painting; exhibited at the New Haven Paint and Clay Club in 1924; had also exhibited sketches at the Academy of Design in New York City in 1872, and in 1874 sketched Milwaukee for Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; author: Detmold (1879), The House of a Merchant Prince (1882), Choy Susan and Other Stories (1884), Old Mexico and Her Lost Provinces (1884), Fish and Men in the Maine Islands (1885), The Golden Justice (1887), A House Hunter in Europe (1893), Sergeant Von (anonymously) (1889), The Faience Violin (translated from the French of Champfleury) (1893), A Pound of Cure (1894), Writing to Rosina (1894), The Brown Stone Boy and Other Queer People (reissued as Queer People) (1902), The Yellow Snake (reissued as Tons of Treasure) (1902) and Anti-Babel (1919); author also of a war song, "The Khaki and the Blue"; contributed short stories and articles to the Century, Harper's Magazine, Scribner's, Atlantic Monthly, and Nation; translated selections from Spanish authors for the Library of the World's Best Literature; commemorated the sixtieth reunion of his class in a poem; had been president of the Brooklyn Library Association, vice-president of the Connecticut Library Association, first vice-president of the Graduates Club, New Haven, and vice-president of Brooklyn Golf Club; honorary member of Connecticut chapter of American Institute of Architects; member of National Institute of Arts and Letters; Society of Letters, Science, and Arts, of Nice, France; Authors' Club, and Society of Colonial Wars.

Married July 28, 1886, in New York City, Mary Dearborn; daughter of George Follansbee Jackson (B.A. Bowdoin 1850, M.D. Jefferson Medical College 1853), and Rachel (Dearborn) Jackson. Children: Duquesnes (died in childhood), and Julian Brocklehurst (died in 1912 when a midshipman at United States Naval Academy). Mr. and Mrs. Bishop separated in 1917.

Death due to arteriosclerosis. Buried in the Old Cemetery at East Haven, Conn. By the terms of his will the residue of his estate was bequeathed to Yale, to establish the William Henry Bishop Fund for promoting the study of architecture in the University. He had also established in 1912 the Midshipman Julian B. Bishop Memorial, a fund of $1,000 to be used for the purchase and care of books on marine lore in the University Library.

From the Yale College Obituary Record, 1928.