92 AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS [92 



Study to determine the number of literary relatives of 

 authors seem to disprove this proposition quoted from 

 Ward. Appendix A contains a list of families furnishing 

 more than one member to the roll of literati, together 

 with the name, degree of relationship, and date of birth 

 of all authors belonging to each family. It is a notable 

 list. Such family names as Adams, Abbot, Beecher, Ed- 

 wards and Everett are conspicuous in the history of 

 American letters. In all, sixty-eight families furnished 

 one hundred and fifty-eight of the thousand men of 

 letters.' There were many other less important members 

 of these families who almost gained a place on the roll, 

 but who did not quite measure up to the standard re- 

 quired. Besides these persons there were no doubt other 

 relatives whose kinship was not discovered, for it must 

 be remembered that the sources did not mention all de- 

 sired facts, and they might well fail to state that a minor 

 author was a nephew or cousin of some other writer 

 of comparatively little importance. It is therefore safe 

 to say that the figure indicating the amount of literary 

 kinship is a minimum.^ 



The number of authors of each degree of relationship 

 appears in Table XXVII. In each case the relationship 

 given is that of the nearest relative who appears on the 



^ It is of interest to note in passing that exactly half of the related 

 literati did at least a part of their work in the same fields, and half of 

 them did their work in quite different fields. 



' The figure is also much smaller than one which would indicate the 

 total number of men of mark who were related to the thousand literati. 

 It will be obvious to anyone who even casually inspects the roll of 

 American literati (Appendix D), that many authors had relatives who 

 were well known in fields other than Hterature. There is no simple 

 and accurate way of estimating the number of these eminent non-liter- 

 ary relatives, but probably it is quite as large as that of the literary 

 relatives. Cf. Odin, op. cit., pp. 323 and 394. 



