Anthony Bleecker

Anthony Bleecker (1770 – 1827) was a lawyer and poet who was friends with Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant. Bleecker was born in New York City in October 1770. He graduated from Columbia University and studied law, but was reputedly never a successful practitioner. For some thirty years he was a contributor of prose and verse to periodicals published in New York City and Philadelphia. Bleecker was one of the founders of the New York Historical Society, and was a trustee of the New York Society Library from 1810 until 1826. The poet William Cullen Bryant wrote: "Anthony Bleecker, who read everything that came out, and sometimes wrote for the magazines, was an amusing companion, always ready with his puns, of whom Miss Eliza Fenno, before her marriage to Verplanck in 1811, wrote that she had gone into the country to take refuge from Anthony Bleecker's puns."

Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, in New York City is named after him. He got this honor not for his writing, but because the street ran through the Bleecker family farm. [cite book |last=Moscow |first=Henry |title=The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins |year=1990 |publisher=Fordham University Press |location=New York City |isbn=0823212750 ]

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