A Genuine Vermonter: Peleg Young Bliss

A Genuine Vermonter: Peleg Young Bliss

Bliss, Peleg Young

“We have recently had the pleasure of a visit by a remarkable man, an native of Vermont, who has resided for many years at Sugar Grove, Illinois. Peleg Y. Bliss was one of ‘God’s poor,’ but by industry, temperance, integrity, wit and wisdom, he has become wealthy; and, what is best, he is a father to other poor boys of the present generation. At nine years of age he visited an aunt at Montpeller, the wife of the late Dr. Sylvester Day of the United States Army. He was then indentured to the late John Howes of Moretown, and after an unfortunate experience for a short time, he ran away, and turned up at Strafford, where he was very lucky in gaining the favor of the late Hon. Jedediah H. Harris, under whose patronage he got into business that has been for himself and for the heirs of Mr. Harris remarkably prosperous. With no education but that of the Vermont district school to being with, Mr. Bliss had made himself a good writer, and has contributed much to the press in New York city and Chicago, and always for useful purposes. He claims to be the originator of the policy, recently adopted by the United States government, of granting prairie lands to settlers who plant trees and thus stock that portion of the country with timber. Among his contributions to the Chicago press is a very touching tale entitled ‘John Leniel’s Revenge.’ It is a story of a boy who was adopted and educated by Bliss, and enlisting in the Union army was the first of his company to fall by disease. We hardly know who to honor most, the patriotic boy or his foster father. It is not a remarkable thing for natives of Vermont to have an affectionate remembrance of their native state, but Mr. Bliss has a remarkable way of remembering not only Vermont but her children. In a book he obtains a sentence of some sort and the signature of every Vermonter he meets, and on the walls of a room prepared or the purpose in his house, he puts these memorials of the children of his native state. We cannot help honoring Mr. Bliss as a worthy ‘Green Mountain boy.’ “

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September 17, 1879

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Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84023200/1879-09-17/ed-1/seq-2/

“Vermont Watchman and State Journal”, Montpelier, Vermont, Volume 74-3805, No. 49, September 17, 1879.

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