Henry Wadsworth LONGFELLOW
1882 - LONGFELLOW DEAD. The Much-Beloved Poet Passes Away Peacefully at His Home in Cambridge Friday Afternoon - A Brief Sketch of the Man and His Works.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet, died at his residence in Cambridge, on Friday afternoon, at the age of 75 years and 25 days. His illness was short ant not very painful, and his life ended as it had passed, quietly and serenely. Within a half an hour the solemn tolling of the alarm bells let Cambridge know that her greatest and best citizen was no more. The seventy-five awe-inspiring peals reminded the startled city of the time of rejoicing but so short a time ago, only a few weeks, when Cambridge, America, the whole world joined in singing the praises of our greatest poet, and thanked heaven that his life had been spared the even three-quarters of a century. Now he is gone.

Among none did the news of his death spread faster than among the school children of Cambridge. He was their friend and they loved him. His seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated not only by the children of the Cambridge schools, but by those of almost every city in the land. Longfellow loved the boys and girls. An old resident of Cambridge, who has known him for fifty years, was telling Thursday how he had refused to make an address at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Cambridge, but when he saw so many children present he had to say something to them, and how, after he had finished, they crowded round him on the platform and kept him busy till the dinner signing his autograph in their albums; then he told the rest to come to his house and he would write his name for every one. Your reporter remembers once, when he was a small boy, being with a large company of ladies and gentlemen whom Longfellow had kindly consented to show over a quaint old mansion where he lived. All the rest had been introduced save the one boy, and he was evidently thought too insignificant; but the kind-hearted poet saw the omission, and grasping his hand gave him a more cordial greeting even than he had given to the rest of the party. It was such never-to-be-forgotten acts as this which endeared him to all who met him, acquaintance or stranger. To people of the latter class he was especially kind.

Professor Longfellow left quite a large family, several of his children being well-known to every citizen of Boston and Cambridge. Of his immediate family there are his sons Ernest and Charles, and his daughters, Edith (Mrs. Richard H. Dana), Annie and Alice; his son-in-law, Richard D. Dana; his brother, Alexander, of Portland; his sisters, Mrs. James Greenleaf of Cambridge, and Mrs. Pierce of Portland; his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Ernest Longfellow, and his brothers-in-law, Thomas and Nathan Appleton...

The Boston Weekly Globe
Boston, Massachusetts
March 28, 1882

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