Richard Henry Stoddard was born on July 12, 1825, in Hingham, Massachusetts.^[1] He spent most of his boyhood in New York City, where he became a blacksmith and later an iron moulder, but in 1849 he gave up his trade and began to write for a living. He contributed to the Union Magazine, the Knickerbocker Magazine, Putnam's Monthly Magazine and the New York Evening Post. In 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne helped him to secure the appointment of inspector of customs of the Port of New York.