George Alfred Townsend was born on January 30, 1841, in Georgetown, Delaware, to Stephen and Mary Townsend. His father earned a living as a Methodist minister. As he grew up, the family moved throughout Delaware and Maryland, and they settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1854. He graduated from Central High School, and in 1860, he began working as an editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

 

In 1862, he became a war correspondent for the New York Herald. He accompanied the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula campaign. He contracted malaria during the summer of 1862 and travelled to Europe to recover his health. In England, he delivered lectures about the Civil War and its origins. He returned to Virginia by 1865 and resumed his work as a war correspondent. He covered President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination for the New York World, and he later published his reports as The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth.

 

He married Elizabeth Rhodes on December 21, 1865, and they had at least two children: Genevieve, born around 1866; and George, born around 1874. They travelled throughout Europe, and their daughter was born in Paris. They moved to Washington, D.C., in 1867, and he worked as a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He published under the pen name “Gath.”

 

He moved to Burkittsville, Maryland, in the mid-1880s, and he earned a living as a novelist. His wife died in 1903. In 1911, he moved into his daughter’s household in New York City. He died there on April 15, 1914.

 

Image: George A. Townsend (courtesy Wikicommons)

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