Contemory Inscription on title page...Christmas 1962 Thomas Buchanan Read (March 12, 1822 – May 11, 1872), was an American poet and portrait painter.Read was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania on March 12, 1822. Read wrote a prose romance, The Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard, and several books of poetry, including The New Pastoral, The House by the Sea, Sylvia, and A Summer Story. Some of the shorter pieces included in these, e.g., "Sheridan's Ride," [1] "Drifting,""The Angler", "The Oath," and "The Closing Scene," have great merit. Read was briefly associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Read moved back to the United States and enlisted in the Union army. He served the north by giving readings, singing and reciting his civil war songs in military camps across the north.The literary work of his tenure as a soldier, The Wagoner of the Alleghenies, “The Oath,” and “The Defenders” were popular readings among Northern lecturers, as their pro-Union sentiments and unwavering sense of patriotism inspired the masses.


His greatest artistic popularity took place in Florence. Among portraits he painted were Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning and William Henry Harrison. Read died from injuries sustained in a carriage accident, which weakened him and led him to contract pneumonia while on shipboard returning to America.

Wagoners of the Alleghenies transported merchandise from the ports of the East to the trade centers of the West and returned with agricultural products; they rose to prominence during 1810 to 1820, but finally succumbed to the competition of the railroads. Their chief routes were the Pennsylvania Road from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and the Cumberland Road from Baltimore to Wheeling. Their wagons, referred to as Conestoga or Pittsburgh wagons, were about twenty feet long, six to eight feet wide; powered by teams of six or eight horses, they could carry loads of over 6,000 pounds.
There were two classes of wagoners—regulars and sharpshooters. Regulars engaged in hauling the year round; sharpshooters were farmers who, when freight rates were high, undertook hauling for short periods. Sharpshooters paid higher tolls because their ordinary farm wagons had narrow-rimmed wheels that cut up the road. The regulars' wagons had broad-rimmed wheels. Wagoners traveled about fifteen miles a day, more for sharpshooters, and stayed overnight at taverns along the road.
Wagoners ran a brisk and profitable traffic through the Alleghenies; in 1822 a congressman estimated that 5,000 wagons had passed over the southern road that year, and in 1836, during a period of five weeks, thirty wagons passed daily over the northern road. Rivalry with canals caused the wagoners to form associations or to join transportation lines; and competition from the railroads forced the wagoners out of a large share of the business shortly before the Civil War.