ALFRED B. STREET (1811-1881)

Alfred Billings Street, poet, lawyer, and librarian, was born December 18, 1811, in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of Randall Street and his wife Cornelia Billings. He attended the Dutchess County Academy until the family moved to Monticello, Sullivan County, New York, after which he studied law with his father. He was admitted to the bar and practiced in Monticello until 1839, when he went to Albany and there practiced for a few years. He was married to Elizabeth Weed in 1841, and by her had one son. In 1843 to 1844 he edited Northern Lights, and from 1848 until his death in Albany, N. Y., June 3, 1881, he was State Librarian. He began to write when he was but fifteen years of age, some of his poems being published by William Cullen Bryant in the Evening Post. His first book of poems, "The Burning of Schenectady and Other Poems," appeared in 1842. For Beadle''s Monthly he wrote a few short stories, and one serial for the Saturday Journal.

REFERENCES: Scribner's Dict. Amer. Biog., XVIII, 1936, 134-35; Nat. Cyc. Amer. Biog., XI, 1909, 103, with portrait; Rufus W. Griswold, The Poets and Poetry of America, 1843; Allibone, Dict. Eng. Lit., II, 2283-84; Albany Argus, June 3, 1881; New York Times and New York Tribune, both of June 3, 1881.

Saturday Journal. No. 4