Month: July 2013

July 31: Poet Phoebe Cary died on this date in 1871, just five months after the death of her sister Alice, also a poet, whom she had tried to nurse back to health.

July 30: Brigadier General George Crockett Strong, who led the brigade attack on Confederate Fort Wagner just weeks earlier, as depicted in the movie “Glory,” and was slightly wounded, contracted tetanus and died on this date in 1863.

July 29: Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, wife of future President Theodore Roosevelt, was born on this date in 1861; she died on Valentine’s Day, 1884, of Bright’s Disease, brought on by child birth.

July 28: “The Greeter,” a bronze memorial to George Catlin, painter of and writer about the American Indian, was unveiled on this date last year.

July 27: Mary Marr Platt, movie producer, production designer, and screenwriter, with “The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon,” “Bad News Bears,” “Terms of Endearment” and others to her credit, died on this date in 2011.

July 26: On this date in 1796, artist George Catlin, who made a career of painting American Indians, was born.

July 25: William Livingston, signer of the United States Constitution and governor of the State of New Jersey during the Revolutionary War, died on this date in 1790.

July 24: On this date in 1986, a monument to Townsend Harris, who opened Japan to the West in 1858 and is still revered in that country, was dedicated.

July 23: On this date in 1862, Henry Halleck became General-In-Chief of all Civil War Union armies.

July 22: Schuyler Hamilton, grandson of Alexander Hamilton, was born on this date in 1822; he would fight in the Mexican and Civil Wars, rising to the rank of major general.