Hosmer

The three newly appointed judges who con-
stituted the territorial supreme court were to sit
separately at nisi priiis, as well as in bane. Hos-
mer opened his court on the first Monday in De-
cember 1864 in the dining hall of the Planters'
House in Virginia City. The first term of the
supreme court began in the following May, and
it soon appeared that the frontier community
was none too sympathetic with legal modes of
thought. Before long the court was engaged in
a conflict with the legislature which culminated
in a legislative resolution calling upon the chief
justice to resign. Hosmer ignored it, serving
his full term of four years. In the autumn of
1865 he went East on a visit, and while in New
York he delivered before the Travellers' Club an
address on Montana, descriptive of the territory's
resources, which was later published. On his re-
turn he wrote an account of his journey under
the title A Trip to the States. In 1869, the year
following the expiration of his term as chief jus-
tice, he was appointed postmaster at Virginia
City and served till 1872 when he removed to
San Francisco. There he resided until his death,
holding positions in the custom-house and in the
state mining bureau. He also continued his lit-
erary work and in 1887 published Bacon and
Shakespeare in the Sonnets, exploiting the Ba-
conian cipher theory. He likewise continued his
Masonic activities until his death. Hosmer was
three times married: to Sarah Seward, who died
in 1839; to Jane Thompson, who died in 1848;
and to Mary Stower, who died in 1858.

[The most authentic account of Hosmer's life, con-
tained in Contributions to the Hist. See. of Mont., vol.
Ill (1900), is partially reprinted in Tom Stout, Mon-
tana: Its Story and Biog. (1921), vol. I. See also R.
G, Raymer, Montana: The Land and the People (1930),
vol. I; J. B. Hosmer, Geneal. of the Hosmer Family
(1861); and the Morning Call (San Francisco), Nov.
1*1893.] C.S.L.

HOSMER, JAMES KENDALL (Jan. 29,
i834-May u, 1927), author, librarian, was born
in Northfield, Mass., the son of George Wash-
ington and Hanna Poor (Kendall) Hosmer. He
was descended from James Hosmer, a native of
Hawkhurst, Kent, England, who emigrated to
America in 1635 and settled at Concord, Mass.
At seventeen Hosmer entered Harvard, and for
four years after his graduation in 1855 he re-
mained in Cambridge as a theological student.
In 1860 he was ordained minister of the Uni-
tarian Church at Deerfield, Mass. Two years
later he enlisted as a private in the 52nd Massa-
chusetts Volunteer Infantry. After his regiment
was mustered out, in 1863, he prepared for pub-
lication his war-time journal under the title The
Color-Guard (1864). It elicited warm praise

Hosmer

from eminent critics of the time, was read widely
in both England and America, and opened the
way to contacts with persons of distinction,
which Hosmer kept up during most of his life.

Hosmer returned to his parish in Deerfield,
but he had long felt that, because of his some-
what unorthodox ideas, he was unsuited for the
ministry. It was therefore without hesitation
that in 1866 he accepted a position as professor
of rhetoric and English literature in Antioch Col-
lege, Ohio, which he retained until 1872. The
next twenty years he spent in Missouri, as pro-
fessor of history at the state university at Co-
lumbia from 1872 to 1874 and as professor of
English and German literature at Washington
University at St Louis from 1874 to 1892. From
1892 to 1904 he was librarian of the Minneapolis
Public Library and for the rest of his life he re-
mained in Minneapolis, except for brief periods
of residence in Boston and in Washington, D. C.

In spite of his arduous duties as college pro-
fessor and librarian, Hosmer still found time for
considerable literary activity. Many of his sto-
ries and articles appeared in magazines and
newspapers. His third book, A Short History of
German Literature, published in 1878, did much
toward establishing his reputation as a scholar
and has been widely used by students of German.
The favorable reception of this work led to an
invitation to contribute to the Story of the Na-
tions series a volume on The Story of the Jews
(1885), a vivid and sympathetic account of the
history of that people. Three biographies by
Hosmer, Samuel Adams (1885, American States-
men series), The Life of Young Sir Henry Vane
(1888), and The Life of Thomas Hutchinson
(1896), written at a time when impartiality and
restraint were not the fashion among biog-
raphers, are noteworthy for those qualities.
Among Hosmer's other historical publications
are: A Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom
(1890); A Short History of the Mississippi Val-
ley (1901) ; The History of the Louisiana Pur-
chase (1902) ; and two volumes, The Appeal to
Arms, 1861-63 (1907) and Outcome of the Civil
War, 1863-65 (1907), in the American Nation
series. Though they make little contribution to
historical knowledge, they are well written and
some of them have been widely read. Hosmer
also wrote two novels, The Thinking Bayonet
(1865) and How Thankful Was Bewitched
(1894), and a book of reminiscences, The Last
Leaf (1912). He edited a reprint of the 1814
edition of the History of the Expedition of Cap-
tains Lewis and Clark (1902), a reprint of the
1811 edition of Gass's Journal of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition (1904), and Winthrop's Jour-

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