American librarian and poet, born at Groveland, NY, on the 29th of December 1848; educated at Temple Hill Academy, Geneseo, NY, and at Burr and Burton Seminary, Manchester, VT; studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts; began practice in New York City, but ill health compelled him to give up his profession, and he removed to California. In 1887 he was made chief librarian of the San Francisco Free Public Library, where his eight years of service gave him such repute that he was chosen, in 1894, to fill the place made vacant by the death of Dr. William F. Poole, as chief librarian of the Newberry Library in Chicago. He wrote verse and literary essays from boyhood. Among his published writings are Thistledrift (1887), Woodblooms (1888), Queen Helen (1895), all poems, besides two volumes of essays—The Golden Guess (1892) and That Dome in Air (1895). He edited Wood Notes Wild (1892), a series of unique papers on bird-music, written by his father, Simeon Pease Cheney. See also “The Happiest Heart,” etc.
