American poet; born in Milton, IN, on the 1st of March 1835. After working in a printing-office, he studied at Kenyon College, and also at Capitol University, OH; contributed to the Louisville Journal, and became private secretary to the editor, George D. Prentice. He was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington, and then until 1870 was occupied in journalistic work in Cincinnati, OH, and in this year was appointed clerk to the United States House of Representatives, and the following year librarian to the House. He was United States consul at Cork from 1882–94. He wrote a number of volumes of verses, his first being written in conjunction with W. D. Howells, and entitled Poems of Two Friends; and with his wife, Sarah Morgan Bryan, The Nests at Washington (1864). He subsequently published Poems in Sunshine and Firelight (1866); Western Windows, and Other Poems (1869); Landmarks (1871); The Lost Farm (1877); Poems of House and Home (1878); Pencilled Fly-Leaves, essays (1880); Idyls and Lyrics of the Ohio Valley (1881); At the Holy Well (1887); Lost Hunting Grounds (1893). Mr. Piatt’s verses have been well received both in his native country and in Great Britain. Lowell wrote of them sympathetically, discovering in them a “native sweetness and humanity, a domesticity of sentiment that is very attractive.” His wife (born in Lexington, KY, on the 11th of August 1836; married in 1861) published some volumes of poetry, including A Woman’s Poems (1871); A Voyage to the Fortunate Islands (1874); That New World (1876); Poems in Company with Children (1877); Dramatic Persons and Moods (1880); An Irish Garland (1884); In Primrose Time (1886); Child’s World Ballads (1887); The Little Emigrants (1887); The Witch in the Glass (1889); An Irish Wild Flower (1891); An Enchanted Castle (1893); Poems (2 vols., 1894). She died in 1919.
