Henry Ames Blood was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 civil servant, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

. He is chiefly remembered for The History of Temple, N. H.

Life

Blood was born in Temple

Temple, New Hampshire

Temple is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,366 at the 2010 census.- History :Incorporated in 1768, Temple takes its name from colonial governor John Wentworth's lieutenant governor, John Temple.- Geography :...

, New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, the son of Ephraim Whiting and Lavinia (Ames) Blood. Due to his father's death on December 29, 1837, when he was a year and a half old, his childhood years were spent with his mother's family in New Ipswich

New Ipswich, New Hampshire

New Ipswich is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,099 at the 2010 census. New Ipswich, situated on the Massachusetts border, includes the villages of Bank, Davis, Gibson Four Corners, Highbridge, New Ipswich Center, Smithville, and Wilder, though these...

, New Hampshire. When his mother remarried on February 9, 1842, he acquired a stepfather, Samphson Fletcher. He was educated at the New Ipswich Academy

New Ipswich Academy

New Ipswich Academy was a historic private academy in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, which operated from 1789 to 1968.-History:...

 in New Ipswich, and Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

, from which he graduated in 1857. Afterwards he was a school teacher for a few years in New Hampshire, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, and Paris

Paris, Tennessee

Paris is a city in Henry County, Tennessee, United States, west of Nashville, on a fork of the West Sandy River. In 1900, 2,018 people lived in Paris, Tennessee; in 1910, 3,881; and in 1940, 6,395. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 9,763. It is the county seat of Henry...

, Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

.

About 1861 he moved to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, where he was employed for most of his adult life, to accept a clerkship in the Internal Revenue Department

Internal Revenue Service

The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...

. After a short service there he was transferred to the Department of State, in the employ of which he long remained. He also worked for the Bureau of the Census and the Department of the Treasury

United States Department of the Treasury

The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...

.

As a young government worker in Washington, D.C., Blood was in the city at the time of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

's assassination. His letters to his mother on the aftermath of the assassination and the trial of the conspirators were discovered in 2005 in one of the homes of Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln was an American lawyer and Secretary of War, and the first son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln...

, and reveal an interesting impression of contemporary public sentiment concerning the events.

He was married twice, first, October 15, 1862, to Mary Jeannie Marshall, daughter of Orlando and Eliza Cunningham (Mansur) Marshall of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and second, October 19, 1880, to Mary E. Miller, daughter of Col. Ephraim F. and Catherine (Seymour) Miller. From his second marriage he had one son, Royal Henry Blood, born July 29, 1884, who died young in 1892.

Blood died at his home in Washington, D.C. and was buried with his son in New Ipswich, New Hampshire. His widow married again after his death, on February 11, 1902, to Col. Royal E. Whitman. Upon her own death in 1905 she bequeathed to the Public Library of New Ipswich $10,000 to establish The Henry Ames Blood and Royal Henry Blood Memorial Fund for the maintenance of the library, and another $10,000 to the town of Temple, New Hampshire, $8,000 for the erection of a schoolhouse, to be known as the "Henry Ames Blood and Mary Miller Blood School," and $2,000 for the care and maintenance of the town common. These bequests were to be paid after the death of Col. Whitman.

Works

Blood's The History of Temple, N. H. (1860) is still considered an important resource for the history of that region.

His poetry was highly regarded and anthologized in his own day, when he was considered in the first rank of American poets, but has been dismissed as overly-sentimental by later critics. Among the periodicals and newspapers in which his verse appeared were
Boston Advertiser

Boston Daily Advertiser

The Boston Daily Advertiser was the first daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston.-History:...

, The Century Illustrated Magazine

The Century Magazine

The Century Magazine was first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City as a successor to Scribner's Monthly Magazine...

, Christian Union, Dollar Monthly Magazine, Flag of Our Union, Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly

Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...

, The Independent, The Knickerbocker Monthly

The Knickerbocker

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, was a literary magazine of New York City, founded by Charles Fenno Hoffman in 1833, and published until 1865 under various titles, including:...

, The Magazine of Poetry and Literary Review, New England Magazine, New York Observer

New York Observer

The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...

, New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, New York Tribune

New York Tribune

The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...

, Scribner's Magazine

Scribner's Magazine

Scribner's Magazine was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. Scribner's Magazine was the second magazine out of the "Scribner's" firm, after the publication of Scribner's Monthly...

, The Home Journal

Town & Country (magazine)

Town & Country, formerly the Home Journal and The National Press, is a monthly American lifestyle magazine. It is the oldest continually published general interest magazine in the United States.-Early history:...

, and The Youth's Companion

Youth's Companion

The Youth's Companion , known in later years as simply The Companion—For All the Family, was an American children's magazine that existed for over one hundred years until it finally merged with The American Boy in 1929...

.

Blood's dramatic works appear never to have made much of an impression, either in his own lifetime or since. At least one of them (How Much I Loved Thee! (1884)) was published under the pseudonym of Raymond Eshobel, which is an anagram

Anagram

An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...

 of the author's name.

Nonfiction

• The History of Temple, N. H. (1860) (Google Books e-text)
• "Germany" (article) (1872)
• Proceedings in the Internal Revenue Office Commemorative of the Late Judge Israel Dille (1874)

Drama

• The Emigrant (1874)
• Lord Timothy Dexter, or, The Greatest Man in the East (1874) (Google Books e-text)
• The Spanish Mission, or, The Member from Nevada (1874)
• How Much I Loved Thee! A Drama (1884) (Google Books e-text)
• The Return of Ulysses

Poetry

Dates are of first publication if known; an "a." before a date indicates the poem appeared in an anthology or collection of that date (original publication was likely earlier); an asterisk indicates the piece was collected in Blood's Selected Poems.

• Selected Poems of Henry Ames Blood
  Selected Poems of Henry Ames Blood
  Selected Poems of Henry Ames Blood is a collection of poetry by American poet Henry Ames Blood. While his verse had been widely anthologized during his lifetime, this volume was the only book devoted solely to his verse. It was published in hardcover in Washington, D.C. by The Neale Publishing...
  
  (collection, 1901) (Google Books e-text) (Internet Archive e-text)
• "At the Door" (ca. 1860)
• "The Chimney-nook"* (The Home Journal, May 5, 1860)
• "Pro Mortuis"* (New York Post, Jul. 15, 1862)
• "Sighs in the South"* (New York Weekly Tribune, Oct. 13, 1862)
• "May Flowers"* (New York Weekly Tribune, Apr. 26, 1863)
• "The Sale of the Picture" (Dollar Monthly Magazine, Jul. 1863)
• "The Last War of the Dryads"* (Knickerbocker Magazine, Jul. 1863)
• "Fantasie"* (Knickerbocker Magazine, [Jan. 1864)
• "The Masque in Fantasie"* (Knickerbocker Magazine, Feb. 1864)
• "The Astrologers" (Flag of Our Union, Jan. 7, 1865)
• "The Death of the Old Year"* (The Independent, Dec. 28, 1871)
• "The Grand Orchestra"* (The Independent, Jan. 11, 1872)
• "The Departure of the Gods from Greece" (The Independent, Mar. 28, 1872)
• "The Song of the Savoyards"* (Scribner's Monthly, Jun. 1875)
• "Jeannette"* (Harper's Weekly, May 19, 1879)
• "The Invisible Piper"* (a.1882)
• "Yearnings"* (a.1882)
• "The Two Enchantments"* (The Century Magazine, Jan. 1883)
• "The Rock in the Sea"* (The Century Magazine, Sep. 1883)
• "Webster"* (New York Observer, Jun. 17, 1886)
• "At the Grave: In Memory of A.M."* (The Century Magazine, Feb. 1887)
• "Comrades"* (The Century Magazine, Dec. 1887)
• "Ad Astra"* (The Century Magazine, Dec. 1888)
• "Old Friends"* (Boston Advertiser, Nov. 15, 1889)
• "The Fighting Parson"* (The Century Magazine, May 1890)
• "Margie"* (Youth's Companion, May 21, 1891)
• "The Drummer"* (The Century Magazine, Jul. 1891)
• "Shakespeare"* (New York Tribune, date unknown (a.1891))
• "The Byles Girls" (The New England Magazine, Aug. 1897)
• "Great Expectations of the House of Dock" (a.1897)
• "The Last Visitor"* (a.1895)
• "The Fairy Boat"* (a.1901)
• "A Midnight Chorus"* (a.1901)
• "The Serene Message"* (The Century Magazine, date unknown (a.1901))
• "Saint Goethe's Night"* (a.1901)
• "Thoreau: In Memoriam"* (a.1901)