John Milton Harney

John Milton Harney (1789-1825) was an American physician and poet.

Life

He was born in Delaware, 9 March, 1789. He studied medicine and settled in Kentucky. After the death of his wife in childbirth, he took work with the "New York Enquirer".http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~harney2/General/Thomas3.htm]

He then travelled to Europe, accepted a naval appointment, and spent several years in South America.

On his return he edited a paper, the "Savannah Georgian". He became a Catholic, joined the Dominicans, then beginning their mission in Kentucky.

He died at Somerset, Kentucky, on 15 January, 1825.http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Harney]

Works

He was the author of a number of poems printed in various magazines. In 1816 he published anonymously "Crystalina; a Fairy Tale, in Six Cantos". [http://198.82.142.160/spenser/BiographyRecord.php?action=GET&bioid=35403] Works published posthumously were "The Fever Dream", from his time in Savannah, Georgia, and "Echo and the Lover".

Family

He was the elder brother of William Selby Harney; their father, Thomas Harney, was an officer in the Revolutionary War.

He married Eliza Cooper, daughter of Judge John Rowan. She died in 1815. ["The Papers of Henry Clay. Volume 4: Secretary of State, 1825" (1972), p.491.]

Notes