Walter D. Edmonds
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Walter "Wat" Dumaux Edmonds (July 15, 1903 - January 24 1998) was an American author noted for his historical novels, including the popular Drums Along the Mohawk of 1936 which was later made into a movie.
Walter was born in Boonville, New York, and began a longtime association with Harvard University when he entered Choate Rosemary Hall in 1919. Originally intended for chemical engineering, he became more interested in writing, and worked as managing editor of the Literary Magazine, then edited The Advocate, and received an A.B. in 1926.
In 1929, he published his first novel Rome Haul, a work about the Erie Canal, later a play The Farmer Takes a Wife. He married Eleanor Stetson in 1930.
Drums Along the Mohawk was on the best-seller list for two years, and second only to Gone With the Wind for part of that time.
Edmonds eventually published 34 books, many for children, as well as a number of magazine stories. He won the Newbery Medal in 1942 for The Matchlock Gun and the National Book Award in 1976.
Eleanor died in 1956, Walter remarried, to Katherine Howe Baker Carr, who died in 1989. Walter Edmonds died in Concord, Massachusetts in 1998.
External links
- Choate Rosemary Hall obituary (http://www.choate.edu/alumniparent/Publications/bulletin/w.s98/html/memorium2.html)
- Remembrance from UticaOD.com (http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2003/06/30/opinion/9209.html)
- Edmonds papers at Harvard (http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/hua04999.html)