Featured Author

Rufus Rockwell Wilson

by

Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr.

Rufus Rockwell Wilson was a prominent Elmira newspaperman and author. Born in Troy, Pennsylvania, in 1865, he came to Elmira as an assignment writer on the Elmira Teleggram. It was he who showed Rudyard Kipling the way to Quarry Farm when Kipling came to Elmira to see Mark Twain in 1889 on his way from India to England.

In 1888 Wilson visited a number of Utopian communities in the East and Midwest and wrote articles describing them. When he left the Telegram in December 1890, he was the Associate Editor. He worked on several metropolitan New York newspapers and began to write books. His interest and research made him a recognized Lincoln scholar and in 1943, he received an honorary doctorate from Lincoln Memorial University. He returned to Elmira in 1937 and with his second wife ran the Primavera Press.

He died in 1949 at the age of 84, and is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in his native town of Troy.

He is the author of the article about Robert G. Ingersoll reprinted in the August through October 1991 issues of the Crooked Lake Review.

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