Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1886 — MEN OF NOTE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MEN OF NOTE.

Hon. Jojhn Bigelow, the Man Who Declines a Fat o£oe. » Hon. John Bigelow, who has just declined the office of Assistant United States Treasurer, was bom at Malden, Ulster County, N. Y., in 1817, and was graduated from Union College in 1835. He studied law in New York. City with Robert Sedgwick, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. While chiefly devoting his time to the practice of his profession during the ensuing ten years he found time for much literary work; which attracted the attention of ; prominent Democrats of the Silas Wright

and William L. Marcy school, with whom he soon became intimate. Mr. Bigelow’s first official appointment was that of Inspector of Sing Sing prison, conferred upon him by Gov. Wright in 1844, and which he held until the office became elective by the revised Constitution of 1847. In 1850 Mr. Bigelow became part owner of and editorial writer on the Evening Post. In 1861 he was appointed Consul at Paris, and on the death of the Hon. Willflhn L. Dayton in 1865 he was appointed Minister to France, occupying the post until 1867, when he resigned and returned to this country. While acting as Consul he discovered and was able to frustrate a plot devised by the French Imperial Government to furnish the Southern Confederacy with four .ironclad cruisers. Mr. Bigelow returned to Europe in 1870, and resided in Berlin for about three years. He returned to this country and to his literary work in 1873, and two years later, at the request of Governor Tilden, became a member of the commission to investigate the management of the canals of the State. In the fall of the same year he was elected Secretary of State. Since his retirement from that office he has held no official position. Among Mr; Kigelojy’B literary works are “Jamaica in 1850, or the Effect of Sixteen Years of Ffeedom on a Slave Country,” and “Wit and Wisdom of the Haytians,” written after visits to the West Indias in 1850 and 1854 respectively. While in France he wrote a work entitled “Les Etats Unis d’Amerique en 1863,” designed to correct prevailing French notions regarding this country. It served its purpose well. He discovered while in that country the original manuscript of the autobiography of Dr. Franklin aud the finest portrait of Franklin known to be in existence—a pastel by Dnplessis. In 1874 Mr. Bigelow published a life of Franklin compiled entirely from his writings. It was in three volumes, and is the standard biography of Franklin. His latest work, “The Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden,” was published about a month ago by Harper & Brothers.