John Delafield

Born in London in 1812, he was the son of John and Mary Roberts Delafield. He was educated first in England, came with his family to the United States in 1820, studied at the Litchfield Law School, and was admitted to the bar in Marietta, Ohio, in 1832.

Although trained as a lawyer, he is remembered today through a small body of nonfiction that shows how broad his interests were. Mysticism and Its Results appeared in 1857, and An Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America is another of the works associated with his name.

Those titles point to the subjects that seem to have fascinated him most: hidden knowledge, religious and philosophical questions, and the origins of ancient cultures in the Americas. He died in 1866, leaving behind works that reflect the restless intellectual curiosity of his era.