|
George Higby Throop (1818 – March 2, 1896) (born Higby Throop) was an American schoolteacher and novelist. Under the pseudonym Gregory Seaworthy he wrote three novels, ''Nag's Head: or, Two Months among "The Bankers." A Story of Sea-Shore Life and Manners''; ''Bertie: or, Life in the Old Field. A Humorous Novel''; and ''Lynde Weiss''. The first of these was the first novel in the United States to deal with then-contemporary life in North Carolina.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Throop, George Higby (Gregory Seaworthy) )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Summary of Nag's Head. Or, Two Months Among "The Bankers." A Story of Sea-shore Life and Manners )〕 ==Life and career== Throop was a native of Willsboro, New York; his father, George Throop, Sr., was a manufacturer and storekeeper, whose second wife, George, Jr.'s mother, died soon after giving birth to the boy. Initially named "Higby", he later took his father's first name as his own.〔 He was a student of classics and an avid reader from youth. Throop attended the University of Vermont for one year, from 1835 to 1836, and may have attended another college afterwards. He married, unhappily, and soon the union broke up. Following this, he spent much of the 1840s as a schoolmaster and mariner.〔 Throop is known to have come to the coastal plains of North Carolina by 1849, and he may have traveled there earlier. It is possible that he taught at a plantation near Hertford, but by March of that year he had moved to Scotch Hall, the plantation of Cullen Capehart located near Merry Hill in Bertie County. He remained there until October; during the summer he accompanied the family and servants to Nags Head, where the Capeharts had a summer residence.〔 He then is supposed to have spent some time in Philadelphia overseeing the publication of his novels. Throop was not a success as a writer, and continued to work as a schoolmaster, traveling wherever he could find work. He is known to have been in Georgia in 1853, but by the American Civil War he had settled in what would later become Hampshire County, West Virginia.〔 There he was a well-liked member of the community, an accomplished singer, composer, and lyricist; however, suffering from alcoholism, he eventually ceased teaching. Around 1888 he discovered a previously unknown son from Boston, Massachusetts; the man, Edward H. Palmer, had taken his stepfather's name.〔 Palmer gave his father twenty dollars a month, which allowed Throop to board with various inhabitants of Bloomery, the town in which he had last taught, until his death. He was buried in the cemetery of the Presbyterian church on Bloomery Run, his grave finally receiving a marker in 1955 through the efforts of the Pioneer Teachers Association of Hampshire County.〔 Throop is memorialized by a state historic marker indicating the location of Scotch Hall. The marker is along U.S. Route 17 in Bertie County, about eight miles southeast of the house itself, which still stands〔(【引用サイトリンク】title="Scotch Hall" Marker )〕 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「George H. Throop」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|