In man

York City, the son of Henry Inman
painter, and his wife, Jane Riker (O'Brien) In-
man. When Henry was yet a boy his father died
and his mother moved to a small farm near
Hempstead, L. I. The youth for a time attended
the Athenian Academy at Rahway, N. J., and had
further instruction from private tutors. At twen-
ty he enlisted in the army, and as a private (later
a corporal) in the Qth Infantry served for four
years in the Indian disturbances in California
and Oregon. On the outbreak of the Civil War
he was transferred to the 17th Infantry, Army
of the Potomac, becoming a first lieutenant in
October 1861. In the Peninsular campaign he
served on the staff of Gen. George Sykes, and
for gallant conduct at Gaines's Mills, June 27,
1862, was brevetted a captain. During the next
two years he served in the Quartermaster's De-
partment. At the end of the war he was sent
to Kansas, where he distinguished himself in
the Indian campaigns, attaining the brevet of
lieutenant-colonel in February 1869. O*1 July 24,
1872, he was cashiered from the army.

In 1878 Inman took charge of a newspaper, the
Lamed Enterprise. In 1882 he became manager
of the Kansas News Agency at Topeka and was
subsequently employed on various newspapers
in the state. His interest in the frontier prompted
the writing of a number of sketches of adven-
ture which in 1881 were published in book form
under the title Stories of the Old Santa Fe Trail.
Another collection, In the Van of Empire, fol-
lowed in 1889. The wide circulation of these
sketches, due in part to the printing of a selec-
tion of them by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa
Fe Railway Company as an advertisement, in-
duced Inman to plan a larger and more compre-
hensive work on the subject. With the financial
aid of his friend, W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), he
completed the volume, which was published in
November 1897 under the title, The Old Santa Fe
Trail, The Story of a Great Highway. It scored
an immediate success, bringing him money and
fame. During the next year he produced Tales
of the Trail, The Ranche on the Oxhide, and A
Pioneer from Kentucky, and in collaboration
with Cody, The Great Salt Lake Trail. In 1899
he published The Delahoydes and a compilation
of the frontier experiences of the Hon. Charles
J. Jones under the title, Buffalo Jones' Forty
Years of Adventure.

Inman was married in Portland, Me., Oct. 22,
1862, to Eunice C. Dyer, the daughter of a
prominent shipbuilder. In his later years he
separated from his family, living in a small
hotel in Topeka. He was a man of many eccen-
tricities. He lived frugally but spent money lav-

483

Inman
ishly on a blind boy whom he had met in a hos-
pital The large royalties received during his last
two years were squandered, and at the time of
his death he was in debt His writings, though
popular, have little historical value. He died in
Topeka.
[F. B. Heitman, Hist. Reg. and Diet, of the U. S.
Army (1903) ; Appletons' Ann. Cyc., 1899; Who's Who
in America, 1899-1900; Kansas City Star, Nov. 13,
1899; Topeka Daily Capital and Kansas City Jour.t
Nov. 14,1899.] WJ.G.
INMAN, JOHN (i8os-Mar. 30, 1850), jour-
nalist and editor, the son of William and Sarah
Inman, was born in Utica, N. Y. (F. B. Hough,
A History of Lewis County, 1860, p. 124). About
1812 William Inman removed with his family to
New York City. Although without an adequate
formal education, John, toward the close of 1823,
went to North Carolina, where he taught school
for two years. After spending a year in Europe,
he returned to New York and from 1829 to 1833
practised law. But owing either to a small clien-
tele or to a love of literature, inherited, perhaps,
from his father, who was a gentleman of educa-
tion and culture, he gradually drifted into jour-
nalistic work. From 1828 to 1831, and later in
1835 and 1836, Inman served on the editorial
staff of the New York Mirror, a literary maga-
zine founded in 1823 by George P. Morris. For
a short time in 1828 he seems also to have had
an editorial charge in the New York Standard.
About 1837 he accepted a more important ap-
pointment as an assistant editor of the Commer-
cial Advertiser, and with the death of William
L. Stone, the editor-in-chief, in 1844, assumed
its complete editorial control, which he retained
until shortly before his death. With the estab-
lishment in 1844 °f the Columbian Lady's and
Gentleman's Magazine, Inman was appointed
editor of the periodical, later having as an asso-
ciate Robert A, West. This periodical was for-
tunate in numbering among its contributors such
writers as H. T. Tuckerman, Mrs. Lydia Sigour-
ney, and Edgar Allan Poe. Dttyckinck asserts
that Inman himself on one occasion wrote an
entire number of the periodical. Inman's con-
nection with the magazine ceased in 1848. He
was also for a time a contributor to the Spirit
of the Times and the New York Review.
Thus Inman's life was largely spent in the
obscurity of editorial offices, where he passed
an anonymous literary existence. Still, the pe-
riodicals and miscellanies of his day reveal a
number of signed articles which aid us in esti-
mating the man's literary ability. These prose
tales vary much in subject matter and artistic
value, "Old Graham the Beggar," in The Chris-
tian Souvenir (Boston, 1843), is a feeble, senti-
1