William H. C. (William Howe Cuyler) Hosmer

Born in Avon, New York, in 1814, this American poet grew up in a family with deep ties to law and public life. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1841, studied law, and later served as a master in chancery in Avon before taking a post in the New York City Custom House.

He is best known for poetry rooted in the Genesee Valley and for a lasting interest in Native American history and traditions. Sources agree that he traveled among tribes in places including Florida and Wisconsin, and that this research shaped important parts of his writing. His long narrative poem Yonnondio, or the Warriors of Genesee is often singled out as one of his notable works.

Hosmer died in 1877, just shy of his sixty-third birthday. Though not widely read today, he remains an interesting figure in nineteenth-century American literature: a regional poet, a careful observer of local history, and a writer whose imagination was closely tied to the people and stories of the early American frontier.