Charles Jacobs Peterson
BiographyCharles Jacobs Peterson (July 20, 1818–March 4, 1887) was an American author and publisher who published under his own name and also was known to use the pen names Harry Cavendish, Harry Danforth, J. Thornton Randolph, and Henry R. Shipley.
Peterson was born in Philadelphia, the son of Thomas P. Peterson and his wife, Elizabeth Snelling Jacobs. He was a descendant of Erick Peterson, who migrated from Sweden and settled with a colony of the same nationality on the Delaware in 1638. He studied law at the University of Pennsylvania with the class of 1838, and was admitted to the bar although he was not graduated. He never practiced his profession.
Three of his brothers, Theophilus, Thomas, and George, founded the once well-known publishing house of T. B. Peterson and Brothers, of Philadelphia. In May, 1839, when Charles was less than twenty years of age, he was employed by George R. Graham, who had just purchased Atkinson’s Casket, as associate editor, a position which he retained when this magazine became Graham’s Magazine in 1840 or 1841. In 1840, also, Peterson purchased a part interest in the Saturday Evening Post, in which Graham also had a part. In the same year, he founded the Lady’s World, afterwards called the Ladies National Magazine, and in 1848, Peterson’s Magazine of which he was himself the editor until his death nearly fifty years later. Peterson was an editorial writer for Joseph C. Neal’s Saturday Gazette during the middle 1840s and for the Philadelphia Bulletin from its beginning in 1847. He wrote many sketches and poems for various newspapers and periodicals, and published a number of historical works.
Bibliography
Mabel; or, Darkness at Dawn (??)
Agnes Courtenay (1847)
The Oath of Marion (1847)
Military Heroes of the Revolution (8 vols., nonfiction, 1847)
Military Heroes of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War (nonfiction, 1848)
Cruizings in the Last War (1850, as Harry Danforth)
Naval Heroes of the United States (nonfiction, 1850)
The Valley Farm (1850)
The Cabin and Parlor; or, Slaves and Masters (1852, as J. Thornton Randolph)
Kate Aylesford (1855)
The American Navy: Being an Authentic History of the United States Navy, and Biographical Sketches of American Naval Heroes, from the Formation of the Navy to the Close of the Mexican War (nonfiction, 1857)
The Old Stone Mansion (1859)
The Reefer of ’76; or, The Cruise of the Fire-Fly (1860, as Harry Cavendish)
The Privateer’s Cruise and the Bride of Pomfret Hall: A Sea Tale of ’76 (1860, as Harry Cavendish)
The Black Rover (1869, as Henry R. Shipley)