Wallace, William R.

Born: 1819-XX-XX Kentucky

Died: 1881-05-05 New York, New York

Flourished: 1841 to 1881 New York, New York

William R. Wallace, poet, studied at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana in the early 1830s, and later returned to his native Kentucky to study law. Wallace settled permanently in New York City about 1841 and embraced a literary career, publishing poems in popular magazines and newspapers, and forming a friendship with Edgar Allan Poe. During the Civil War, he composed several patriotic songs, and on the death of Abraham Lincoln penned a “National Anthem for the Obsequies of the Late President Lincoln, in Union Square, New York.” Wallace married twice and had three children.

George F. Whicher, “Wallace, William Ross,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 19:378-79; John F. Baird and J. B. Garritt, eds., General Catalogue of the Alumni and Former Students of Hanover College (Madison, IN: Courier, 1890), 10; Andrew Boyd, comp., A Memorial Lincoln Bibliography (Albany, NY: Andrew Boyd, 1870), 139; The New-York Times (NY), 7 May 1881, 5:3; 9 May 1881, 8:3.