Joseph Lemuel Chester - Biography

Biography

Chester was born in Norwich, Connecticut on the April 30, 1821. His father, Joseph Chester, was a grocer, who, after dying in 1832, left little property to his family. His mother was Prudee, the daughter of Major Eleazer Tracy. After the death of her first husband, she married the Reverend John Hall, of Ohio's Ashtabula Episcopal Church. At an early age, Chester became a teacher at a school in Ballston, New York, and in 1837 he was appointed clerk of a land agency office in Warren, Ohio. In 1838, at age seventeen, he moved to New York in order to study law. But he ended that pursuit and became employed as a clerk by Tappan & Co., a silk merchant firm.

Joseph Chester's literary tastes developed at an early age. While in New York he contributed articles to newspapers and magazines of his day with a poetic character. The Knickerbocker for January 1843 contains a poem by him, entitled Greenwood Cemetery, and signed Julian Cramer, his best known pseudonym. The same year his first volume, Greenwood Cemetery and Other Poems, was published in New York and Boston.

He also lectured and visited many of the States as an advocate of temperance. Around 1845, Chester moved back to Philadelphia where he obtained a job as a merchant's clerk. In 1847, and for some years subsequently, he was a commissioner of deeds. From 1845 to 1850 he was also the musical editor of Godey's Lady's Book. In 1852, he became one of the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer and of the Daily Sun; and on the consolidation of the city of Philadelphia, Chester was elected a member of the city council in 1854.

During several sessions of Congress in Washington he visited the city as a corresponding editor and as an assistant clerk in the House of Representatives. He was appointed by the Honor James Pollock, who was the governor of Pennsylvania from 1855–8 as one of his aides-de-camp. Chester was given the military rank of colonel, an appellation by which he was afterwards always known.

While in Washington he was employed to sell patent rights in England, and leaving his native country landed at Liverpool on September 6, 1858. Various causes prevented him from succeeding in his undertaking, but he settled in London and made it his residence till his death.

For a time he kept up his connection with the American newspaper press and for about three years furnished a weekly letter from London to the Philadelphia Inquirer. His first work in his new home was John Rogers, the Compiler of the First Authorized English Bible, the Pioneer of the English Reformation, and its First Martyr, a book of labor and research at last told on his constitution.

Joseph Lemuel Chester died at his residence, 124 Southwark Park Road, London, May 26, 1882 and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery on May 31.