George Bliss Jr. was born on May 3, 1830, in Springfield, Massachusetts, to George and Mary Bliss. His father was a lawyer and state legislator who owned $17,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Springfield. He spent the mid-1840s travelling through Europe, and he enrolled at Harvard University in 1848. He graduated three years later. While at Harvard, he helped publish two volumes of the Annual of Scientific Discovery and a work entitled Things Not Generally Known.

 

After graduation, he spent two more years in Europe. According to an early biographer, he studied “at the University of Berlin and in Paris, and [travelled] through Sweden, Southern Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.” He returned to Springfield around 1853, and he married Catharine Dwight on October 22, 1856. The couple had no children. They eventually moved to New York, and he earned a living as a lawyer. He served as Governor Edwin D. Morgan’s private secretary from 1859 until 1860. He resigned in November 1860, and a New York writer noted that he had “discharged his duties efficiently and acceptably.”

 

In 1862, he became New York’s paymaster general. According to one biographer, he “was appointed Captain in the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery and detailed to the military staff of Gov. Morgan, who had been made a Major General of volunteers.” He helped organize the 20^th USCT Infantry, the 26^th USCT Infantry, and the 31^st USCT Infantry.

 

After the Civil War, he resumed his legal practice in New York City. By 1870, he and his wife owned $45,000 of real estate and $50,000 of personal property. He served as attorney for the Metropolitan Board of Excise and the Metropolitan Board of Health. He supported the Republican Party, and he played an active role in local Republican politics. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1881, he “was called in to assist the Attorney General…in the prosecution of the celebrated Star Route cases,” a scandal stemming from bribery in the United States Post Office Department.

 

His wife died in 1884, and he married Anais Casey on May 25, 1887. The couple had three children together. He retired from public life in 1893, and he died at his summer home in Wakefield, Rhode Island, on September 1, 1897.

 

Image: George Bliss Jr. (courtesy Wikicommons)

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