Will Wallace Harney, poet, was born at Bloomington, Indiana, June 20,
1832, the son of John H. Harney, professor of mathematics in the
University of Indiana, and author of the first _Algebra_ edited by an
American. When the future poet was seven years of age his father removed
to Louisville, Kentucky, to accept the presidency of Louisville College.
In 1844 President Harney became editor of the Louisville _Daily
Democrat_, which he conducted for nearly twenty-five years. Will Wallace
Harney was educated by the old grammarian, Noble Butler, and at
Louisville College. He became a teacher in the public schools of the
city, in which he taught for five years; and he was the first principal
of the high school there, holding the position for two years.
Know-Nothingism then swept the city and elected a new board of trustees,
which requested Harney's resignation. He was appointed to a
professorship in the State Normal School at Lexington, which he held for
two years. He then returned to Louisville to practice law, but he was
shortly afterwards asked to become assistant editor of the _Daily
Democrat_; and after his father's death, in 1867, he became editor of
that paper. Harney's masterpiece, _The Stab_, that John J. Piatt called
"a tragic little night-piece which Heine could not have surpassed in its
simple, graphic narration and vivid suggestiveness," was written in
Kentucky before 1860. In 1869 Harney removed to Florida, where he
planted an orange grove and wrote for the high-class magazines and
newspapers of the East and South. From 1883 to 1885 he was editor of
_The Bitter Sweet_, a newspaper of Kissimmee. Harney spent the final
years of his life with his only son, William R. Harney, a business man
of Jacksonville, to whom he inscribed his one book, _The Spirit of the
South_ (Boston, 1909). This volume brought together his poems and short
stories which he cared to preserve from newspapers and periodicals. The
poet died at Jacksonville, Florida, March 28, 1912.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Blades o' Blue Grass_, by Fannie P. Dickey
(Louisville, 1892); _Memorial History of Louisville, Kentucky_, by
J. S. Johnston (Chicago, 1896).