Benjamin Perley Poore

Benjamin Perley Poore
Born	November 2, 1820 Newburyport, Massachusetts
Died	May 30, 1887 Washington, D.C.

Benjamin Perley Poore (November 2, 1820 – May 30, 1887) was a prominent American newspaper correspondent, editor, and author in the mid-19th century. One of the most popular and prolific journalists of his era, he was an active partisan for the Whig and Republican parties.

Poore was born near Newburyport, Massachusetts, to parents Benjamin and Mary Perley (Dodge) Poore on the family estate, Indian Hill Farm. His father's family were long-time residents of the area; his mother had been born in 1799 in Georgetown, a small incorporated community in the newly defined District of Columbia.

When Poore was seven, his parents took him to Washington, D.C., for the first time, during the administration of President John Quincy Adams. About this time, he enrolled in Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts, to prepare for a West Point appointment. When he was eleven years old he was taken by his father to England, where saw Walter Scott, Lafayette, and other notables. Poore was expelled from Dummer Academy for misbehavior and apprenticed himself to a printer in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Poore's father purchased a newspaper in Athens, Georgia, the Southern Whig, which Poore edited for two years. In 1841, he visited Europe again as attaché of the American legation at Brussels, remaining abroad until 1848. During this period he was the foreign correspondent of the Boston Atlas. After editing the Boston Bee and Sunday Sentinel, Poore returned to the national capital in 1854 as a Washington correspondent. His colorful letters to The Boston Journal and other newspapers over the signature of "Perley" made his national reputation.

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