Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748 â€" June 25, 1816) was an American
writer, lawyer, judge, and justice of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania.A frontier citizen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United
States, he founded both the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of
Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Gazette, still operating today as the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Brackenridge was born in Kintyre, Scotland, a
village near Campbeltown. In 1753, when he was 5, his family emigrated
to York County, Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border, then a
frontier. At age 15 he was head of a free school in Maryland. At age
19 he entered the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University,
where he joined Philip Morin Freneau, James Madison, and others in
forming the American Whig Society to counter the conservative
Cliosophic, or Tory, Society. (Today these are conjoined as the
American Whigâ€"Cliosophic Society.) Freneau and Brackenridge
collaborated on a satire on American manners that may be the first
work of prose fiction written in America, Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to
Mecca . They also wrote The Rising Glory of America, a prophetic poem
of a united nation that would rule the North American continent from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Brackenridge recited it at
the commencement exercises of 1771.
writer, lawyer, judge, and justice of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania.A frontier citizen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United
States, he founded both the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of
Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Gazette, still operating today as the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Brackenridge was born in Kintyre, Scotland, a
village near Campbeltown. In 1753, when he was 5, his family emigrated
to York County, Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border, then a
frontier. At age 15 he was head of a free school in Maryland. At age
19 he entered the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University,
where he joined Philip Morin Freneau, James Madison, and others in
forming the American Whig Society to counter the conservative
Cliosophic, or Tory, Society. (Today these are conjoined as the
American Whigâ€"Cliosophic Society.) Freneau and Brackenridge
collaborated on a satire on American manners that may be the first
work of prose fiction written in America, Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to
Mecca . They also wrote The Rising Glory of America, a prophetic poem
of a united nation that would rule the North American continent from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Brackenridge recited it at
the commencement exercises of 1771.
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