Mirabeau Lamar, the second President of the Texas Republic, dies in Richmond, Texas

Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was born in Georgia where he been secretary to the governor and a newspaper editor. He arrived in Texas just before the revolution and distinguished himself as the commander of cavalry at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He went on to serve in the first Texas cabinet and became the second President of the Republic in 1838. He fought in the Mexican War and was later in his life as United States minister to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He died of a heart attack and was buried in Richmond, Texas. (By John Osborne)
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Robert Stephenson, eminent British engineer, dies in London

Robert Stephenson was the only son of railway pioneer George Stephenson who had built the first regular working railway and designed the famous "Rocket" locomotive. Robert took the family company to new heights with an array of construction that included the famous Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straights in Wales and the 6,588 foot Victoria Bridge built in 1859 over the Saint Lawrence River at Montreal.  Stephenson died at his home in London aged fifty-six, one month after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, his fellow engineering giant. (By John Osborne)
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Thomas Babington Macaulay, British statesman and historian, dies in London

Son of a colonial governor and abolitionist, Thomas Babington Macaulay had a outstanding career as a Whig parliamentarian, colonial administrator, and cabinet officer under Melbourne and Russell. In addition, he was a world famous poet, essayist, and Whig historian, especially famous for his great uncompleted History of England From the Accession of James II. He had been made a Baron in 1857 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. (By John Osborne)
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John Young Mason dies in Paris where he is United States Minister

John Young Mason, United States Ambassador to France, died of a stroke in Paris aged sixty. Formerly Secretary of the Navy and Attorney General in the Tyler and Polk cabinets, he was Virginian who strongly supported slavery. He had been involved soon after his arrival in Paris in 1853 in the "Ostend Manifesto" affair in which American diplomats outlined a secret plan to purchase Cuba from Spain. His remains were returned to the United States and buried in Richmond. (By John Osborne)
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"Old Brown," Fayetteville (NC) Observer, November 14, 1859

Notes
Cropped, edited, and prepared for use here by Don Sailer, Dickinson College, November 24, 2008.
Image type
document
Use in Day View?
No
Courtesy of
19th Century U.S. Newspapers (Gale)
Permission to use?
Yes
Original caption
Old Brown
Source citation
"Old Brown," Fayetteville (NC) Observer, November 14, 1859, p. 3: 4.
Source note
Original image has been adjusted here for presentation purposes.

Joseph Brown Smith, the first fully blind American college graduate, dies in Louisville, Kentucky

Born in Dover, New Hampshire and totally blind soon after birth, Joseph Brown Smith gained an early education at an institution for the blind in Boston under Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and then entered Harvard College at the age of seventeen in 1840. In 1844 he became the first blind person graduated from a four year college in the United States. He was almost immediately appointed Professor of Music at the Asylum for the Blind in Louisville, Kentucky. There he married a blind woman and had two sighted sons but died after a lengthy illness in 1859, aged thirty-six. (By John Osborne)
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Clara Wilson, 125 year old former slave, dies near Alton, Illinois

The American Almanac for 1861 reported the death near Alton, Illinois of "Clara Wilson, said to he 125 years old. She was born a slave in South Carolina, and was carried to the western country about seventy years ago. She was ordinarily called 'Granny Wilson," or "Granny Buck'." (By John Osborne)
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Thomas De Quincey, the English author and opium eater, dies in Edinburgh

Thomas De Quincey was from a Manchester merchant family and attended Oxford University where he became addicted to the opium he would use throughout his life. He made a sensational entry into letters when, as an unknown, he published his "Confessions of an Opium Eater" in the London Magazine in 1821. He went on to a long career as essayist and translator and enjoyed popularity in the United States during the last decade of his life.  (By John Osborne)
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